Filhaal...

A highly anticipated movie, for it was from Meghna Gulzar, daughter of celebrated poet-writer-director Gulazar. And more because, 'dil chahta hai' by Farhan Akhtar (son of another famouus poet-writer Javed Akhter)

before this had created a wave of anticipation from this new breed of directors...anyways...the movie written/directed by Meghna Gulzar, is about four people and their journey through a period in their lives where their lives get entangled due to a twist of fate.

The film's theme - surrogate motherhood has been dealt with in other hindi movie before this, but none so sensitively. This is the strong

point of the movie, where Gulzar's sensitivity shines through his daughter's work. Some of the scenes in the movie are handled very well and all the lead actors do a very decent job giving a very sensitive performace. Sanjay Suri and Tabu look great together on the screen and both of them emote very well, Sushmita is good in parts but sometimes her character itself seems confused, thus making her look less convincing. Palash Sen's charcter is the weakest link, it's never clear in the movie, why he does what he does. That's where Meghna fails as a writer. Also the movie has a very jerky narrative in the first half where the viewer is deliberately confused and I wonder if it was intentional...or was the director trying to build some kind of suspense ? I believe the movie should have been played chronolgically. I'll be be lenient to the director and attribute this to her inexperience. The music is good, but the songs break the narrative, especially in the second half.

But in all, a good subject, fair treatment (there is much room for improvement though) and great visuals make this a decent family movie. Also being her first movie, I'll give her a cool 7.0/10.0. But we expect a lot better from her.

I was expecting more from this film than I received since the story line is interesting and both the female leads were great. Poor editing, some of which made no sense at all from the beginning to the end, seriously hampered this film and I agree with others who felt the film would have been more effective had it been chronological instead of choppy and disorganized. There were times when I wondered if a reel had been taken out of order. The first 45 minutes was very confusing. Thank goodness that the characters and the actors portraying them were interesting enough to sustain the film.

Very poor marketing strategy.

While every effort at intelligent cinema should be encouraged, this effort was like going up the wrong tree.

Every movie maker need to know their audience. In particular for a picture with an unconventional theme as this.

The sad reality is even in 2002 this kind of movie is not appealing to the masses.

A movie can this could have made a great TV serial.

The subject is itself not new. I remember seeing a similar movie 25 years ago starring Victor Bannerjee, Sharmila Tagore and Shabana Azmi.

Filhaal.. the moment, the present.. is an intelligent movie educating the complications and conflicts that would follow a surrogacy pregnancy. Sia and Rewa, 2 very good childhood friends see each other through thick and thin of life. When Rewa has a miscarriage and loses ability to conceive, Sia steps in to offer her womb for the home of their baby. The bollywood audience has previously been mislead on the concept of surrogacy from the movie Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, where the husband is pushed into having an extra marital sex with a prostitute in order to be able to make her pregnant with is child, therefore the bearer of the family name.

Here we see middle class people, dealing with middle class problems in relationships which most of us can identify with in our everyday lives. Rewa being jealous, and Sia being emotional over her pregnancy, is all legitimate walks of life which we can not change regardless of whether we are best friends or siblings. I like the way the true shade of human is shown here, the color gray, instead of the usual Miss goody two shoes. The way the story slowly unfolds is simply brilliant yet solemn. Sushmita's best performance as yet, Tabu is brilliant as always. I have been looking forward to Meghna's next film ever since.

Filhaal has a lot of beautiful things in it. Sushmita Sen and Tabu are two of them. And I don't just mean their looks but also their performances. Sushmita's performance, in my opinion is the best by an actress so far this year. Meghna Gulzar directs and writes the film beautifully for the most part. Manmohan Singh's camerawork is a feast for the eyes as is Nitin Desai's art direction. They have done it beautifully together. Sanjay Suri gives in a very mature performance and it is a joy to see how much he has grown since Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi. You can really see that Meghana is her father Gulzar's protege in every single scene of the film. But a couple of things stop the film from being a great one. First of all, the Palash Sen character is poorly written, though he does an earnest job of performing it. And secondly, Anu Malik and Gulzar work magic with some of the songs, especially 'Le Chale Doliyon' and the title track but at least two songs in the post interval portions should be removed. Other than that a good solid debut effort. Looking forward to more from this budding new director. Along with Tanuja Chandra and Farhan Akhtar, I believe she is one of the few new directors who have really gotten into the profession to make good entertaining films. 8/10.