The Girl On The Train Review: Parineeti Chopra’s Film Has The Subtlety Of Shatabadi Express

Mira Kapoor is a girl, on a train. It is lush. Armed with a hip flask, in which deep forays are frequently made. Thick eyes stained with kohl, a cloudy tongue, a cloudy brain. She takes the same train, back and forth from London to the suburbs, every day. Every day, she walks past her old house, which falls along the rails, in which lives a pretty woman that Mira envies. And then one day, this woman disappears. A body is in the woods. And questions abound.

This latest edition of ‘The Girl On The Train’ comes after the Hollywood version of the same name in which Emily Blunt plays the alcoholic stalker with a dark past, which in turn was based on the bestselling Paula Hawkins novel. The use of the “ girl ” in the title may have been used to remind you of “ Gone Girl, ” in which Gillian Flynn gave us a glimpse into the sexual and sultry girl who uses her tricks to get herself. get out of trouble. (He also kicked off an endless array of thrillers with “ girl ” in the title.) Hawkins’ daughter wasn’t as sharp as Flynn’s, but there was something seductive about the way she gave us let get into his head, even though the film had it too, a lot is going on – too many characters, too much vodka, too much red herring. It was Blunt’s performance, though not his best, that carried the film through.

The problem with Parineeti Chopra’s Mira is that you never buy it completely. As a girl with unresolved trauma trying to end her broken marriage, the actor looks perfect. Much thought was given to the loose hair, the smeared kajal, the bloodshot eyes. But it is not written with sufficient depth. We have no idea who Mira is, before and after meeting the intelligent Shekhar (Avinash Tiwary), who seduces her before the first song is released. Yes, there are songs in the movie. A Bollywood adaptation of a murder mystery without “naach-gaana”, in 2021? Perish thought. This is also why the film lasts two hours.

The overrated writing drops the plot, which anyway is filled with seemingly unrelated characters in and out: a very gripping policewoman (Kriti Kulhari) is assigned to the case, a mysterious photographer crawls through the same woods where is the body; a stain of blackmail is in the air; an overly friendly shrink (Roy Chowdhury) appears briefly, as does a desi gangster. The characters arrive, and before we can time them, they leave. And Nusrat (Aditi Rao Hydari), the pretty woman who sets everything in motion, could just as easily have been a specter, she is so devoid of substance.

It’s only after a good hour that the overworked Chopra settles in, to deepen her role a bit and provide moments where you can see the girl’s pain, however fleeting. And then the film returns to its unstable artifices, with a climax that is difficult to swallow. Somewhere in the film, Mira is spotted at Paddington Station, and you turn back to Agatha Christie’s near-perfect thriller “ 4.50 From Paddington, ” which also talks about a crime observed from a train compartment. . Now it’s writing. Here you can see the dialogue coming a mile away. At one point, the character of Chopra says “mujhe apna past nahin badalna”, and you know, before she opens her mouth, that she will say: “I want to change my present”.

And this one, even better, still from Chopra: “main usko kabhi nahin bataa paayi ki woh main nahin, mera wound tha (I could never tell him that it was not me, it was my wound)”. You don’t say.