Review of the Indian film Photograph (2019)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7778680/ (Available on Amazon Prime)

Ritesh Batra seems to be very diligently creating his language of cinema and is sure to be recognised as one of the few auteur film makers from India, and in this film he creates his version of a quintessential bollywood film, rich girl falls in love with a poor boy...the ensuing drama of parents disapproval is inevitable but thankfully we are not subject to it. Never the less the underlying tension that it creates pervades everything in the film. The film seems to have borrowed many elements from Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the mood for love' (probably the most romantic film of this century and definitely one of director's favourite films ) - taxi scenes, monsoons, restaurant scene, suspense of what actually happened, the thin line between pretension and reality and finally the lack of chronological order. The director's artistic integrity is intact in this film (even after all the plagiarism from 'In the mood for love') which is definitely one of his less accessible films mostly meant for his fans...lack of background music, usage of a couple of old powerful songs, completely no use of makeup to make the actors look glamourous. While Sanya fits perfectly into the role of an introvert girl, nawaz's performance seems to lack a certain purpose, Nawaz himself seems a bit confused about what he is about and his grand mother surely comes across as someone irritating...When trying to recollect some of the endearing grand moms in Indian cinema Shyam Benegal's Mammo comes to mind, but here the grand mother while trying to look too realistic (coming from a poor UP muslim village) alienates the audience since her compassion seems too self-centred. The last scene would not come as a surprise for someone who is well versed with the director but without the last scene the movie looses all its value, so in that sense the film becomes more of a concept film rather then a film like Lunchbox which can be seen over and over to indulge in the sensibilities of the characters portrayed in every scene of the film.

Ironically i later found out that the two films mentioned in the review are also 2 films that are their in the watchlist of Nawaz's on IMDB...is he pretending that he has not seen these films or did he forget to update his watchlist?