Ishq-e-Nadaan, A Charming Film Doomed To Die Before Birth

Ishq-e-Nadaan(Streaming  On JioCinema)

Rating: ** ½

There are films that are destined for glory even when released under the worst of circumstances. Then there are those films which  are doomed even before they are seen by the audience.

Director  Avishek Ghosh’s directorial debut has the seeds  of a  beautiful  love story told in segments that  somehow  merge  at the  end .There was  no  need to bring the three stories together. But then Ghosh’s well-wishers must have warned him that the audience likes to go home with a  neat ending.  Little did he know they would be watching his breezy labour of love at home only

As a home release Ishq-e-Nadaan is  a welcome addition  to the  cluttered OTT platform. It has a heart  but  misses the soul by millimeters , probably  in the futile quest of a  happy ending, more likely because the first-time director(Ghosh has earlier directed a Bengali shortfilm) got too close to his  characters  to preserve  a detached  distance.

And we really can’t blame Ghosh  for getting so close to his characters. They are charming and  winsome in their search for companionship. This reviewer’s favorite character  is Ashutosh, played by one  of  the more underrated actors of our cinema  Mohit Raina .He plays a widower with a little daughter who with  heartbreaking honesty, tells her father from boardingshool, “How long will you waste your life  just waiting for me to take your calls?”

In walks Lara Dutt as Ramona,the insanely attractive celebrity guest at the  hotel where Ashutosh is a desk manager. You want the sparks to  fly between them, and they do…until Ramona makes a big revelation.

Somehow  you feel these characters deserve a  better send-off than what the screenwriter(Sudeep Nigam) has in store for them.

In the second segment we  have the Saans pair  , Neena  Gupta and Kanwaljeet Singh still attractive together, playing an unlikely  pair seeking companionship  discussing lost opportunities in life, and going that extra mile to try and reclaim what was rightfully theirs.Again, a thoughtful take on a love relationship.

Gupta is  so much more at-home  here than  she was as the bullish  grandmother in Lust Stories2. Kanwaljeet’s character is meant to be over-the-top , and the actor  cannot really handle that.

The  third and weakest story has a stubborn single and pregnant Siya( Shriya Pilgaonkar)  using Piyush(Suhail Nayyar,so much more believable here than in  the recent Jee Karda) as  a  buffer and punching-bag.

The performances are likeable in this  love-story. But  the plot development is way too  preordained  to surprise us even remotely.

Ishq-e-Naadan is far from flawless in depicting the  mysterious ways of destiny in a  love relationship.But the treatment resonates with  the themes .The actors  demonstrate a level of maturity that perhaps the  characters don’t always deserve.