Director: Vinil Matthew
Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Aditya Srivastava, Vikrant Massey, Harshvardhan Rane
Language: Hindi
Taapsee Pannu is slowly becoming an actor with a great filmography. From Thappad to Pink, from Aadukalam to Game Over, her films do seem to run the gamut. Hassen Dillruba is yet another nice addition, to an ever-growing list of films which cover romance, feminism, drama, thrillers and much more.
Haseen Dillruba falls under the murder mystery category but with a romantic twist. Yep, romantic thrillers (an oxymoron at its best) is a thing these days! The plot is clear as the day and the twists are too. Rani Kashyap (Taapsee Pannu) is a Delhi girl who gets married to simpleton Rishabh Saxena (Vikrant Massey) from a small town. While Rani dreams of a man with a sense of humour and a love for books, Rishabh aka Rishu is someone who falls in love with the very first woman he meets on an arranged match. The unlikely pair find that their interests are not in sync. Relationship woes lead to Rani cheating on Rishu, and this leads to a sudden death, a whodunit twist, and a cat-and-mouse race towards a ‘romantic ending’. Giving out anything more will lead to major spoilers!
Haseen Dilruba has its moments. Some of the finest moments in the film come during the tumultuous and evolving relationship between Rishu and Rani. Their first meeting is very nicely done and Rishu becomes the pushover who fixes Rani’s ceiling fan. Watch out for a scene when Rani, a woman who has never cooked in her life, makes mutton curry but emotionlessly reveals to her husband that it was actually for her lover. Rishu continues to enjoy the curry – though with simmering anger – apparently as a testament to his ‘crazy love’. The scene when the couple finally declare their love for one another is as stormy as their relationship.
There are various LOL moments sprinkled in Haseen Dillruba that makes for a nice side plot. Like when Rani gives haircuts to her father-in-law, and facials for her mother-in-law.
Between the two, Vikrant Massey steals the show. He is docile, polite to a T, and loves his wife to his last breath, literally here! Massey pulls off a lovely monologue about his situation and you do end up feeling for him. Taapsee pulls off the role of the ‘modern bahu’ very well. She is effortless when portraying the role of a flawed woman and her no-holds barred acting is proof enough. Kudos to Taapsee for going the extra mile on showing the other side of the story in a relationship! Harshvardhan Rane as Neel makes token appearances, and we see more of his tattooed arms than his acting chops.
Haseen Dillruba is a long film. It tries to be clever by juggling too many plot points, but soon the ‘big reveal’ is obvious, and this is solely because of the time taken to reach to that point. Maybe this is because the film is trying too hard to handle the hardcore romance, thriller, drama, and ‘modern woman’ angles all at once!
Despite the whodunit theme running throughout, the screenplay doesn’t really help us in rooting for any character in the film. The obsession with Hindi crime novels and its most obvious use in the plotline could have been avoided.
The one thought that was recurrent for me throughout Hassen Dillruba is the insistent romanticisation of well… love and romance. The ‘love till you die’ and the ‘crazy in love’ tropes play throughout the film, and at one point, it feels redundant.
If we remove the unnecessary drama, we could have had a sanitised version of a great whodunit with a fantastic plot twist. But, alas, all is fair in love and war!
Rating: 2/5
