High on emotions and performances Starring: Sharmila Tagore, Amol Palekar, Manoj Bajpayee, Simran, Suraj Sharma, Talat Aziz, Kaveri Seth, ...
High on emotions and performances
Starring: Sharmila Tagore, Amol Palekar, Manoj
Bajpayee, Simran, Suraj Sharma, Talat Aziz, Kaveri Seth, Suraj Sharma
Rating: 4 stars
What’s with our veteran actresses eager to play characters coming out on the OTT platforms? First it was Madhuri Dixit last year on Amazon Prime’s “Maja Ma’ and now Sharmila Tagore in Disney Hotstar’s ‘Gulmohar’.
Ostensibly revolving around the Batra family’s sprawling Delhi bungalow, Gulmohar stands for family integrity and togetherness which now seems to be crumbling with all the worms and skeletons creeping out of the cupboards as the family prepares to exit it, having sold it to a real state shark who is planning a multi-storey in its place.
The film begins on a “party” note which also has veteran singer
Talat Aziz bursting into the melodious “Dilkash’ ending on a rather sour note for
the family with the Batra matriarch Kusum (Sharmila) dropping two bombs, One that
she wants them all to stay back and celebrate Holi which is 4 days later and
second she intends to shift to her new home in Pondicherry and will not be
moving in with her son Arun (Manoj) and his wife Indira (Simran) to their Gurugram
penthouse.
Arun who still has a bee in his bonnet about being an adopted child, fumes silently as even his son Aditya (Suraj) and his daughter-in-law Divya (Kaveri Seth) plan to live separately. Arun’s relationship with Aditya is already strained with the latter himself in a fix over lack of finances for his startup.
There is also Sudhakar Kusum’s bitter and disagreeable
brother-in-law played effectively by Amol Palekar who has his own agenda
against her, blaming Kusum for breaking up the family time and again in the name
of being independent.
Thrown into this dysfunctional cauldron of
emotions is Arun’s daughter Amrita (Utsavi Jha) singer and lyricist caught
between her boyfriend and her growing feelings for her girl friend. To round it
all up is the Batra’s inhouse maid Reshma (Santhy Balachandran) the crush of another
servant Jeetendra (Jatin Goswami) who is unable to summon the courage to propose
to her.
Things come to a head when Indira discovers
the will where Arun’s father had willed Gulmohar to Sudhakar as Arun was adopted.
This acts as salt rubbing Arun’s wounds further and he takes off alone on a ride
to come to terms with this betrayal.
Director Rahul V Chitella deftly weaves all these stories together, extracting excellent performances from the entire star cast. The veteran trio of Sharmila, Amol and Manoj lends gravitas to the film which also has another veteran in a brilliant cameo, Vinod Nagpal, as Arun’s biological father. It’s great seeing the ‘aankh mare’ girl Simran back in Hindi films after ages.
The film sends out two powerful messages to
the viewers: When Kusum sees Amrita having a moment with her girlfriend, she
sits her down and tells her, so what if you love a girl, it's love. Along with this out
comes her own secret, her love for a childhood friend Supriya Palekar. The
other is when Arun who is talking to his actual father is told that he did
the best any father would for his son when he abandoned him at the nursing
home where Kusum adopted him after suffering three miscarriages.
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