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Life in a Metro (2007) Director: Anurag Basu Cast: Shilpa Shetty, Kay Kay Menon, Konkona Sen Sharma, Irfan Khan, Shiney Ahuja, Kangana Renaut, Sharman Joshi, Dharmendra, Nafisa Ali Time: 132 min. Hindi with English subtitles Rating: |
Although Life in a Metro suggests that living and loving in a big city is a chaotic, confusing experience, Anurag Basu manages to present city life in a tidy, glossy, moderately well-contained package that features some great cinematography and acting.
Like a city filled with countless stories, Metro intertwines four separate plots that revolve around two sisters, Shikha (Shetty) and Shruti (Sen), and their mother Shivani (Ali). Each plot focuses on the relationships of the characters involved. Shikha’s marriage to Ranjeet (Menon) is growing increasingly dysfunctional because he is having an affair with co-worker Neha (Renaut) and because she finds herself strongly attracted to starving actor Akash (Ahuja).
Shruti is attempting to find an eligible bachelor, but she ends up befriending former potential-boyfriend Monty (Khan). Shikha and Shruti’s mother Shivani reconnects with an old flame (Dharmendra), who left her decades earlier to pursue a career in America. Office middle-manager Rahul (Joshi) pines for Neha, but he doesn’t realize she is sleeping with Ranjeet, his boss. If these messy lives weren’t meshed enough, Shruti and Neha just happen to be roommates.
The multiple love story threads and mother-with-two-daughters triangle give the film the feel of Salaam-e-Ishq combined with Volver. Of course, Metro is more sophisticated than the former but not nearly as subtle or artistic as the latter. Still, Metro offers solid cinema that tackles thematic variations on relationships surprisingly well.
The Neha-Ranjeet-Shikha-Akash storylines cover several aspects of marital infidelity. The Shruti-Monty and Neha-Rahul storylines explore different ways of pursuing love in a metropolis. (Shruti takes the modern online dating approach, while Rahul opts for the old-fashioned ask-a-girl-on-a-date-without-really-saying-it’s-a-date approach.) And the Shivani-Amol storyline looks at requiting unfulfilled love many decades later.
The nuances of these plots are generally handled realistically, with each character remaining true to his or her personality. Shikha is a conflicted mother and wife. Neha is a confused twenty-something with poor self-esteem. Rahul is a sweet guy trying to do the right thing in complicated situations. Shruti is a modern woman who’s so busy searching for an unrealistic ideal she misses the slightly imperfect person right in front of her.
Like many films with multiple storylines, Metro sacrifices some details for the sake of juggling the many plots. As a result, not all of the characters are fully realized. Shivani and Amol remain relatively two dimensional, as do Akash and Monty. But you can’t fault the actors; all of them have demonstrated their talent in other films. So you can only blame Basu, who also wrote the screenplay.
To tighten the film, Basu should’ve cut at least one plot from the script. The obvious choice is the Shivani-Amol story. It offers a nice picture of mature love, but it’s the least interesting thread in the movie, and Basu never explores it as fully as he could have. Dropping this story would’ve allowed Basu to concentrate on the other characters and delve deeper into their psyches.
On the technical side, Metro maintains Basu’s reputation for slick productions and great cinematography (as in Gangster). Some of the compositions are simply exceptional, such as the scene when Akash attempts to seduce Shikha. The shot of his fingers flitting across her stomach goes from erotic to purely artful.
Still, Basu makes one poor technical decision in trying to be innovative in how he incorporates songs in his film. He has the band appear on screen, creating the effect of a music video inside a movie. This trick works for the opening credits, but by the third time, it becomes annoying, and after the fifth time, it’s simply comical.
What amends for this one poor decision is the acting. Nearly everyone performs above average, and Irfan Khan and Konkona Sen are just incredible. Their chemistry together is one of the film’s highlights. Even Shilpa Shetty does a surprisingly good job (especially considering some of her past, less-memorable roles).
Like a real metropolis, Life in a Metro has good parts, a few less than enticing parts, and some parts that make the experience heavenly. After watching Metro, you realize that living in a metro is really what you make of it.
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