Ek Chhotisi Love Story

The tragedy with this movie, if the censor norms are to be followed, is that the hero of the movie (the boy) won't be able to see this movie for the next 3 years in any theatre as he is just 15 and the CBFC has rated the film " STRICTLY FOR ADULTS". And with this classification by the censors, do we assume that the other adult movies which are un-strictly rated as A can be dealt with more leniently.

Anyway, about the movie, it's an ultimate test of your patience. In fact, the first 10 minutes made me wonder whether it was a silent movie until a word was finally uttered at the eleventh minute. And our ex-Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vaypayee has some tough competition here, because the dialogue delivery by the characters are much slower than his speeches.

Assuming it to be an experimental cinema with an unusual theme and without any songs or the regular masala items, expectations were high, but I was sorely disappointed. A boy, who lives only with his granny in some posh apartments, has his telescope constantly focused on the windows of the opposite flat secretly watching the personal activities of a woman. He is 15 – well, accepted. She is 26 – no way. Appearing older than 36 and heavier than 63, dunno what did the boy find so sexy about the women? Add to it her lousy dressing sense and a boyfriend who looks like her son and comes to her home regularly for some sex sex bang bang escapades. And all this while the woman never bothers to shut the windows of her apartment.

You can shut your eyes though. Not out of shame or disgust but boredom. A plot that could have been interesting if explored properly, this one is neither entertaining nor titillating. Ek Choti Si Love Story, Ek Bada Sa headache.

Dude, this movie totally sucked. You should've seen the trailer which made it seem so philosophical and so touching and so heart breaking. You'd run to the nearest place this movie was screening after that to see what happened? Nothing of what you expect is found in this movie. Its completely tuned towards lust and sex rather than what the tagline says, for both the boy and the girl. You'd think that the writer at least came up with a good idea but could'nt pull it off, so deserves a little bit of credit. Wrong. This movie's director and writer has completely ripped off another western movie's plot and idea, as well as the story.

This underlying plot and story had great potential and it was really curious to see how the director would handle such a complicated situation and what kind of psychology would be involved or if the boy really gets the girl? Unfortunately nothing is done and none of the emotional pain or complications are ever explored. The boys is portrayed as nothing more than a voyeur who spies on the woman. His intents seem more sexual than anything else. The woman doesn't handle the kid in a rather expected complicated fashion but eventually ends up taking him in, overacting all the way. Yeah right. The media made a lot of noise about this movie's censorship but it doesn't have any real explicit sexual content. In the end, it seems that someone got a good idea but did'nt know how to proceed.

This less-spirited Krzysztof Kieslowski's movie, "A Short Film About Love", fails in so many accounts. This is a good example for film school students on how a movie could still fail in spite of having pretensions to the contrary.

The plot doesn't make any concessions to its setting and does not make any attempts to connect it to its Indian setting. Character development needs much to be desired and it drags on. Overall, the movie gives as much pleasure as a coitus interruptus. It doesn't quite start right, picks up a little steam in the middle and fizzles because the director doesn't know how to end it.

Nair tries to capture the obsession and disappointment of the boy from the original film but loses it by trying to dilute it to placate the Indian viewer. Unfortunately, this film is likely to disappoint its intended target, the educated urban Indian and Indian Diaspora and will never appeal to the average Indian movie-goer who cannot relate to the treatment.

Maneesha Koirala overacts and doesn't seem to get the nuances that her character should have. Aditya Seal is satisfactory. The rest of the cast appear like props without much to do.

If you have to see this movie, please stick to the original.

The controversy about "Ek Chhotisi Love Story" seems to overshadow the discussion about its quality. Many people thought the sex scenes are too daring. Others believed, the relationship between a 15 year old boy and a 26 year old woman is a very evil thing. I leave everyone his/her moral, but it seems rather strange in a country where marriages with minors are still being arranged. But ... that's somehow off topic.

I want to talk about the film, not morals. And sadly, there's not much good to report. The movie is lensed in a stylish low budget way. You get lots of monochrome colors and hand held camera appeal. That adds to the voyeuristic flavor since the plot revolves around Aditya (15) who is in love with a woman (26) he watches from his window. The first ten minutes have no dialogue. And no quality. The director tries to make us connect with Aditya by showing us exactly what he sees. By making us the voyeur. What works in theory, doesn't work here. Not at all. The woman didn't fascinate me. She bored me. And if that happens, one can not relate with the boy's feelings - and that's all the director wanted to achieve in the first place.

But it's not all lost. The second half, when the boy finally makes contact with the woman, is an improvement. Nice to see an actress (it's actually Manisha Koirala from "Dil Se") having a couple of kilos more than your average supermodel. And her scenes with the boy are interesting and daring - in a dialogue way. A lot of the more daring stuff is hinted at or talked about. Not seen. But "ECLS" doesn't know how to continue. Actually, it doesn't even know how to end. The little momentum the film gets when the two meet gets lost quickly and it ends boring. Thus leaving the viewer with a bad overall experience.

And now, what about the sex, huh? Much ado about nothing. Really, seriously. I was laughing when I saw the scenes. Not because they were bad, but because they were tame. Yes, they were rather daring for a traditional Bollywood movie, but come on! How could anyone get all angry about the movie because of those scenes? They don't even involve the boy. Not that they should - but I was truly shocked by the people who hear that someone heard that something bad was in some movie - and promptly start a riot. Why not invest that energy somewhere useful? Well, I'm digressing again. That's perhaps because "ECLS" is not really worth a lot of words. I appreciate that it's not conventional. But it's not good either. So it gets a

4/10