Dil Dosti Etc

Dil Dosti Etc was picked up by my two sons who were very enthusiastic about the film on seeing it. There was a guilt pleasure they took and I though this is a private joke between them. However, I decided to watch the film and see what my sons are up to… the only thing I had heard when the film got released was that it had Nasiruddin Shah's son and made by Prakash Jha with a new director.

I was greatly surprised to see the faces of my favorite Shreyas Talpade a small time actor who has got the talent and the incredibly talented Smriti Mishra who has apparently returned to the screen after eons.

The greatest feat is the casting and the credit goes to the producer and director for doing so. It is a novel story about young people in modern India. The story is around a challenge of a boy being challenged by his friend to have sex with three women in a day… it is difficult to pin point how but this challenge is able to put across the loss of direction the young people face today. It is one of the subtlest film I have seen on ambitions of youth, of cultural diversity we live, and the anxiety these young kids have away from their parental quarters.

Nasiruddin Shah's son Imaad Shah gives a very understate performance against more vocal character portrayed by Sheyas Talpade. A great delight is to see Smriti Mishra as the colourful prostitute in red light area of Delhi. Other characters have done a great job too – I'll always remember the schoolgirl, her lover, the loud school teacher and the setting of this film. This must have been a film on small budget and one looks forward what the film makers give us next.

Simply a great film seen on Indian Screen. Thoroughly enjoyed the film even if it needs the patience to see what the story teller is trying to show case… he very deftly builds up several characters who go to university in delhi… they come from different background and want different things in life. The two hero are from two mentalities one is small towner and wants to be a politician in college other is this characters who rummages through life and just wants to fulfill one basic need – sex! A great creation of environment, and subtle drama… that is so missing on Indian cinema. what is amazing about your film is that many many things you don't see if you don't bother things behind actors & lines said by people - . what I love and thank you is you don't have to give a message there is a distinct feeling when movie ends that you want to go back and see it again. We discussed why did sanjay die, and would happened if sanjay had actually lived? Highly recommended guys! (and girls! – you will see girls here who are making their own minds on romance, sex and career….) - Abhinav Sekawariv

"Relax. It's nothing" That's the line you take home after the curtains have come down on DIL DOSTI ETC. Prakash Jha, noted for his hard-hitting films, manages to send home the message loud and clear. That it's for the viewer to make his choices. Whether casual sex is nothing or whether betraying a friend means nothing, or whether adding conquests (read scoring in bed with girls) to your already swollen list means anything to you. Or finally, whether sticking by values instilled in you and standing by principles means anything? The choice is yours. This movie does not preach, it just bares the fact which, sadly cannot be ignored.

In that sense this is a good movie. I mean you can only explain the consequences of bad actions to a teenager; at the end you have to respect him/her to make his/her choices.

How many films do we see targeted explicitly at the youth/students/college kids? Prakash Jha has found his audience and in director Manish Tiwary manages to tell a decent tale. It's shocking at times yes; but so is reality.

Coldness of the lead actor (Imaad) really makes up for this movie who perfectly lays the foundation of undertones and implicit scenarios woven by this script. Each character whether its schoolgirl (Ishiita) or the prostitute (Vaishali)or even aspiring model (Nikita) is a built-up for the single question raised and rediscovered in the end of the movie. Provocative yet to the ground reality are the high features, but as usual tapping the best out of Shreyas Talpade would have lead to an archetype(...bollywood cinema...did I say that correctly??). This movie gives you a breathing space but the question remains.... Are you aware of it and seek that space?? I was and I liked the movie till the end.

Set in modern Delhi(Delhi university to be precise), the movie juxtapositions many oddities together. To begin with, the character Sanjay Mishra(Shreyas Talpade), is your quintessential hinterland hero, emotional, with his earthy middle class values, providing a background for his (very ruthless) ambitions. Quite a contrast to this is the aimless Apurv, spectacularly portrayed by Imad Shah...He's cold, aimless, aloof and his mind operates in a space which is distinctly gray, but at the same time colorful. He exemplifies the new liberal man, who's defining character is his ability to negotiate in that ethical never land...Although I should add that though Apurv comes across as cold, he never appears calculating or Machiavellian....Sanjay's girlfriend Prerna is what I would call a perfect example of misplaced western-ism in the garb of modernity, the kind you encounter most in the metros...Ishita Sharma, who plays Kintu, symbolizing the next-gen teens...at the verge of sexual liberation, but still consider it important to cloak their expletives in a hogwash of codes(if you remember Juno, and the scene where her friend goes 'Phuket Thailand'...)....

Overall the film portrays precisely the kind of societal changes going on in India...An urban elite who are too cocksure about their 'modern' values, a small town guy who holds on to his imagined traditional values, ambitious but often confused by big city people and their elitist habits...And in the end of it all, the intellectually ambiguous Apurv reducing everything to 'Sanjay is dead, and I survived'...So at the end it all boils down to cold facts, and nothing else....