India's movie industry isn't known for subtlety. Bollywood, in particular, has yet to come to grips with the "less is more" method of film-making.
Thankfully, there are a number of Indian film-makers who baulk at Bollywood's gaudy style, overuse of archetypes and cookie-cutter stories. Ritesh Batra is one of those
directors, his breakout hit The Lunchbox (2013) wooing crowds with a bittersweet romance sensitively draped over a portrait of Mumbai.
However, in his latest feature, Photograph, Batra may have overcooked his response to Bollywood's bombastic cliches by giving us a film so contemplative and agonisingly restrained that it will try your patience.
Set in Mumbai, this tale of forbidden love focuses on Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a struggling street photographer whose comically overbearing grandmother is pressuring him to get married. After taking a photo of Miloni (Sanya Malhotra), a painfully shy student, he convinces her to pose as his fiancee to appease his grandmother.
Predictably, the two develop a romance that is met with the usual roadblocks of social status and other various pitfalls. It's a somewhat gimmicky premise, from which Batra (who also wrote the screenplay) builds his love story. It's elevated by the couples very different backgrounds which gives Batra the opportunity to comment on India's classism.
