Love songs: yesterday, today and tomorrow
Love songs: yesterday, today and tomorrow
Cast: Jaya Bachchan, Shahana Chatterjee, Om Puri and others
Director: Jayabrato Chatterjee
Rating: **
What’s with Kolkata filmmakers and their penchant for English films! If Jayabrato Chatterjee had made Love Songs: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in Bengali or Hindi, he might have been able to salvage it. But trite English lines, stiffly delivered, make even the few sensitive moments there are in the film, sound fake.
The plot isn’t much to begin with. A Bengali woman’s (Jaya Bachchan) long-ago romance with a Muslim intellectual (Om Puri), refuses to leave her psyche, affecting her daughter (Shahana Chatterjee) and eventually disturbs her grandson (Prithviraj Choudhary).
It seems like too much emotional mayhem for nothing, and all rather contrived. The woman, Mridula, is a widowed social worker, whose daughter Palaash screeches accusations at her all the time, as if she is the only working mother in the world. She also expects her mother to pick up the pieces, every time she messes up her marriage.
For all her severe dignity, Mridula is prone to sudden and pointless revelations. When the mysterious Aftab Jaffrey appears, he hardly seems like he was worth all the turmoil — a glum kurta clad homeopath in a village, married to a bizarre alcoholic (Mallika Sarabhai), who looks like she escaped from a 50s Muslim social.
Lovesongs tries to evoke a story of grand passion, but it’s hard to sit through without either squirming or tittering. Even with a cast like that, there’s isn’t one noteworthy performance. Not even Om Puri who looks lost.
