Katti Batti ***
Dir: Nikhil Advani.
With: Imran Khan, Kangana Ranaut, Vivan Bhatena. 135 mins. Cert: 12A
Anybody studying
auteurism, and its possible application within Bollywood circles, might fashion
an instructive double-bill out of two current releases. A fortnight ago, director
Nikhil Advani’s name appeared on the credits of Hero, would-be showcase for buff rookie Sooraj Pancholi; throughout
that dog’s dinner, you sensed producer Salman Khan – Pancholi’s mentor –
looming over Advani, cracking his knuckles. Understandable, then, if Advani
turned to his other 2015 project, the tragic romance Katti Batti, for light relief. Though the new film’s subject is
fracture – it’s one of those (500) Days
of Summer affairs, setting relationship and post-split recovery side by
side – it’s far more coherent: even its mistakes are all Advani’s own.
Here are a couple of
on-off college sweethearts proceeding through their twenties, and encountering
all the comedowns those years have been known to entail. Hero Madhav (Imran
Khan), commonly known as Maddy, is another of recent cinema’s sensitive,
bespectacled architects; his beloved Payal (Kangana Ranaut) a somewhat cruel
and mocking beauty from rich stock. We open on Maddy’s happy memories of the
couple’s postgraduate domestic bliss, before a crash cut reveals he’s being
rushed to hospital, having knocked back some bleach; thereafter, Advani cleaves
to the (500) Days template, shuffling
backwards and forwards chronologically as the recuperating Maddy replays key
scenes and moments in his head.
Those left befuddled by
Hero’s narrative and tonal
inconsistencies may be relieved there is some kind of structure in place,
however secondhand: the further we get into the lovers’ skylarking, the more
jolting it is to be whizzed back to the cold and lonely present. Almost
everything in this script bolsters our understanding of the central
relationship. Clever interpolation of the Devdas legend immediately trumps Hero’s arbitrary foray into am-dram;
even Maddy’s pet turtle might stand as a substitute for the child this couple
never had. If that exposes how Katti
Batti teeters on the verge of self-pity, then the second half offers some
mitigation, venturing the idea that Maddy’s perspective might not be entirely
reliable.
Advani demonstrates a
surer touch with these (established) young performers than he ever did around
Pancholi: he elicits particularly sympathetic work from Khan, whose Maddy seems
both legitimately hurt and someone who might well make himself a fool for love.
(He’s not, I suspect, called Maddy for nothing: viewers will have their own
opinions on where his behaviour falls on the sweet-to-stalkerish spectrum.)
Ranaut suffers from the conception of Payal as somewhere between incomplete
picture and total projection, although anyone with eyes could see how she might
make a sucker out of somebody, and several post-interval scenes allow her to
fight for this character as more than just an illusion.
The finale barely
convinces: Advani is himself hooked on this pairing’s cosmic rightness, despite
gathering evidence enough to suggest all parties might do better to walk away.
Still, there are modest, fleeting pleasures getting there: a nightclub number
where, for once, everyone dances without obvious choreography, and – among the
unusual Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy songs – one standout (“Sau Aasoon”) which actually
sounds as though it’s been recorded by jamming musos rather than something
repeatedly rinsed through Autotune. You’ll likely forget the whole in a
heartbeat, but there are flickers of sincere emotion here – vital signs that
show Advani can still assemble a functioning entertainment when he hasn’t got
the heavies round.
Katti Batti is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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