Love Aaj Kal - Movie Review

Published: July 31, 2009

By JENNIFER HOPFINGER

Starring Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Rishi Kapoor, Giselle Monteiro, Rahul Khanna

The talented Imtiaz Ali, director of Jab We Met, delivers another touching commentary on the nature of love—how it can be dramatic—when it makes a man travel 1,000 miles just to glimpse his lady from her balcony—and poignantly mundane—when it makes a man pick up the phone to share his humdrum life with the one person who understands him. The title means, “love then and now,” and the story takes place in two time periods.

Veer and Harleen (played by Rishi Kapoor and Brazilian actress Giselle Monteiro in her Bollywood debut) are a Sikh couple in India in the 1960s. Veer falls in love with Harleen at first sight and risks everything to be with her. Jump to the present-day and Veer, now a reflective café-owner in London, relates his romantic story to Jai (Saif Ali Khan), a young career-minded hipster, who’s in a monogamous but commitment-free relationship with Meera (Deepika Padukone). Veer thinks Jai is foolish for not diving into love head-first, but Jai can’t conceive of giving up his freedom. Jai and Meera casually break up when their careers take them in different directions—she to Delhi and he to San Francisco—and that’s when they start to fall in love, but they go to great lengths to fight their feelings for each other, as if the geographical distance between them wasn’t enough. They remain friends—and Jai needs one when he goes through a bad spell. His fling with a French blonde sputters and his dream job isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Still, he refuses to heed his yearning heart. Meera, on the other hand, romantically moves on to her boss Vikram (Rahul Khanna), despite her growing intimacy with Jai.

The female leads are lovely in their respective roles, but the show belongs to Khan, who’s played the Westernized ladies man many times before but gives a nuanced performance here, and Kapoor, who never fails to delight.

Smart dialogue and an effective story structure wonderfully relate the truism that while every generation is different, the experience of love is timeless.

Love Aaj Kal is rated Must See.

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