Movie Review: ‘Haseen Dilruba' (2021)

Source: IMDb

Introduction

Movie’s Name - Haseen Dillruba

Director’s Name - Vinil Mathew

Release Date - 2nd July 2021

Genre - Romantic Thriller

Language - Hindi

Cast

Taapsee Pannu as Rani Kashyap
Vikrant Massey as Rishabh Saxena ‘Rishu’
Harshvardhan Rane as Neel Tripathi
Aditya Srivastava as Inspector Kishore Rawat
Ashish Verma as Afzar
Daya Shankar Pandey as Brijraj Saxena
Alka Kaushal as Mrs. Kashyap
Amit Singh Thakur as Mr. Kashyap

About the Director

The director, Vinil Mathew, is an ad filmmaker, Bollywood director, and writer. In 2000, when he first came to Mumbai, joined Mahesh Mathai’s advertising company i.e. Highlight Films. That was the beginning of his career in ad films. He has made many ad films since then.

In 2014, he turned into a Bollywood film director and a writer with his debut film Hasee Toh Phasee. That film brought him great success. He has always chosen out-of-the-box themes for his films which makes him quite unique from other directors.

He is quite experimental with his work as he brought very fresh and thrilling products for Indian audiences. Although, as a director, he hasn’t worked much.

About the Movie

It is a movie inspired by the infamous short story of Roald Dahl i.e. ‘Lamb To The Slaughter’. The theme/genre of the movie is one of the rarely picked genres, especially nowadays. There are two protagonists with an antagonist who brings the twist to the story.

The story signifies the imbalance in the relationship of a newly married couple of which the third character takes advantage. It also signifies how sometimes sexual desires drive us to the path of tragedy. Tapsee Pannu as Rani Kashyap was so natural and real that we can imagine Rani through Tapsee’s theatricality.

The other characters in the film have also played well on their part. The film starts with an explosion which builds up the curiosity to further watch it. If we see this film from a different point of view it may seem like a complex murder mystery of Rani’s husband where Rani is the most suspicious character.

The main character ‘Rani Kashyap’ used to read crime drama stories of ‘Dinesh Pandit’ and was crazy for all of those stories. Actually, ‘Dinesh Pandit’ is a fictional author which holds the story and makes it more interesting.

There are a few intimate scenes also in the film. It is purely adult content as the complexities of relationships, life, the desire for sexual pleasure and other things can’t be understood by any minor. It is not a big-budget movie and moreover, due to the pandemic, it is not released in the cinema halls.

There are four songs in the film which also push the story one or the other way. The locations used in the film were also adding to the story. A small and remote city i.e. Jwalapur is shown in the film. Moreover, the house and police station were also giving it a real outlook but it could have been better.

There were many scenes in the film which could have been edited. The story is formed in the flashback where we get to know about the reason behind the explosion shown in the first scene of the film.

The way Rani explains to the investigating inspector how it exploded was quite convincing as we cannot think of any other version. It seems like it is crystal clear that the explosion was an accident when she was out. But the inspector didn't agree.

The third character has also an important part in the film i.e. ‘Neel Tripathy’ with whom Rani had an extramarital affair. So the entire story revolves around the three main characters. But the end is quite hard to accept or believe though it is not unreal. The film finally ends with an unexpected revelation.

The Bottom Line

The film has not been appreciated by the critics even all it got from critics are negative comments. The kinds of comments that it got from critics are like “a hot mess”, “illogical and absurd”.

It seems like it is an experiment that could have been better. The teaser of the film is quite happening and convincing. The most famous dialogue of Taapsee Pannu as Rani Kashyap in the film is “sambandh toh mansik hota hai, sharirik toh sambhog hota hai”.

According to my, it is not as pathetic as critics’ comments are reflecting. It is released on an OTT platform Netflix where you can easily watch this unique product of Indian cinema.

My ratings for the movie - 3 out of 5

Written By - Vineet Kumar

Edited By - Umme-Aiman