Review of Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui: A lighthearted rom-com with a strong social message that punches way above its weight.
Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is intended to be a lighthearted portrayal of a serious subject, and the film takes that approach with its characters and plot.
Abhishek Kapoor's Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is surprisingly kind – or at least, it truly attempts to be – for a film dressed up in full Punjabi-Bollywood garb, complete with a catchy Sachin-Jigar music. Its plot is as simple as it gets: a guy meets a girl and falls in love with her. There's only one snag. (We'll get to the 'hitch' later.)
Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is intended to be a lighthearted portrayal of a serious subject, and the film takes that approach with its characters and plot. Manvinder Munjal aka Manu, the individual in question, is a gym owner (Ayushmann Khurana).
Manu's entourage is full of oddballs, including his twin acolytes Riz and Jomo, who are his biggest boosters, and his widowed father, who has finally found love at the youthful age of 55. (The charming way this particular issue — an interfaith one, no less – was handled in the film, way in the background, pleased me.)
Meanwhile, Manu's two sisters play the role of mothers (firmly plural) in his life, intervening in his affairs and urgently trying to get him to'settle down.' A Zumba instructor appears in his life one day. The attraction is immediate and reciprocal. Sparks fly, and music plays. We've arrived at the 'hitch.'
Manvi Brar (Vaani Kapoor), the woman in question, is a trans woman who has had full sex reassignment surgery.
Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui
Manu Munjal, on the other hand, is a macho Punjabi munda whose single goal in life has been to win a local pageant for strong, bulky gabrus, which he has yet to achieve. Discovering this facet of Manvi's existence is too much of a leap for a guy like him. And therein lays the source of the conflict. If you ignore the conflict's details, the rest of the movie follows the formula we've come to expect from most Bollywood love stories. Fortunately, the film's simplicity does not detract from its potential effect.
Trans characters have been rarely featured in mainstream Hindi cinema, and trans identities in general have not always been treated with respect in our films. So simply having a transgender character as one half of the lead duo in a Bollywood romance is reason enough to applaud.
But Supratik Sen and Tushar Paranjpe, Kapoor's writing team, don't stop there.
What's fascinating about the film is that it's not just about Manu and the people around him rethinking gender and identity. This is a little different from the rest of Khurrana's social comedy work in that he isn't the one who is stuck in a pickle. In the film Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, the solution to his difficulty is simple: google it.
More importantly, the film devotes a significant amount of time to conveying Manvi's journey, the hardships she has faced (and continues to face) in carving out a place for herself, to be the person she is within. Granted, Manvi belongs to the upper middle class, which affords him socioeconomic advantages that many others in our society do not.
However, expecting intersectionality to be discussed in a film Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui that is already pushing a particular threshold is too much to ask. Whatever it does explore, it does so with a nuance that I didn't anticipate.
Many aspects of the movie are worth studying and debating. For example, casting a cis-gendered actor to play a transgender character. Or where, in the context of the film, the humour line is drawn, and whether or not the film crosses it. Derogatory phrases and euphemisms about misunderstood elements of trans people are among the first replies to Manvi's secret, as one might expect. However, everybody in the film's hierarchy of characters, starting with Manu and working their way down, visibly learn and mature during the course of the film. Personally, I hope the video elicits critical responses and writing on these topics, particularly from transgender perspectives.
Nonetheless, what Kapoor and his team have accomplished must be commended for the steps forward they have taken. While Ayushmann continues to impress, this film Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui features Vaani Kapoor in her most major part to date. She is a product of a system that encourages unrealistic beauty and physique standards (particularly for women) while suppressing individuality and queerness as an actress.
She's introduced in the same way in this scene. But, at the end, she has done enough to bring Manvi Brar and her problems to life. This is backed up by an entire cast of characters dedicated solely to her. Some people are helpful, while others are not. Moreover, this section of the film Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui is more emotional than humorous.
The Manu Munjal side of things — his friends and family – provide the comic relief. They're the ones who need to bridge a communication gap. The medium is humour, but at the end of the day, their hearts are in the right place.
What you get is an emotional yet upbeat two-hour film that, despite its lightheartedness, manages to cling on to something vital. Chandigarh Against all odds, I find myself pulling for Kare Aashiqui. Aside from commercial success, it's hoped that it would help raise the bar for empathy a notch or two.
Rating :
3 out of 5 stars
