Review: Nawazuddin Is Utterly Believable In 'Photograph'

Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra, Deepak Chauhan, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Vijay Raaz, Jim Sarbh

A love affair scuttled by entrenched class equations was a narrative trope that Hindi cinema liberally banked upon for several decades starting with the 1950s. In many a romantic drama, the impossible-to-bridge chasm would threaten to scupper the ardour of young love. In his fourth film, Photograph, director Ritesh Batra revisits the much-lived construct of yore, but in a subdued style far removed from the norms of the genre. He adopts deliberate pacing and austere treatment to capture the minutiae of city life, shorn of crowd-pleasing flourishes.

Photograph, which arrives in our multiplexes after playing in two major film festivals (Sundance and Berlin), confirms that the man behind The Lunchbox has lost none of his ability to reveal the subtler sides of urban existence. The film mines nostalgia not only for a cinematic tradition but also for a metropolis where the pace of life wasn't as frenetic as it is today.