Feels Like Ishq | Movie Insert's Review | Netflix India | MOVIE INSERT

  

Feels Like Ishq is the title of the latest Netflix anthology– a collection of six films about young love. In each story, eyes meet and sparks fly. The protagonists vary from teenagers to young adults.   The circumstances range from a protest to a marriagethat almost falls apart to a job nterview. The actors are a sprinkling ofnew and familiar faces, including Radhika Madan,Rohit Saraf and Tanya Maniktala.   Most of the films are 30 minutes long but truthfully, little in the 3 hours feels like ishq. Much of it is synthetic, simplistic, strainingto be meaningful and, largely, insipid. The first scene in the first film in the anthology,Save the Da(y)te, begins with an Instagram live. Radhika plays Avani, an Instagram influencerwho has over 500,000 followers.  84,000 people watch her talk about her best friend’s impending wedding. Since these stories are about young people, cell phones, social media and hashtags play a pivotal role:   in Star Host, a girl struggling with a controlling boyfriend embarks on a solo holiday and captures   each epiphany with a photo and a hashtag; in Quaranteen Crush, a teenage boy in Chandigarh   who doesn’t yet own a phone borrows his mother’s and texts the girl next door; in She Loves Me,   She Loves Me Not – the one same-sex story in the anthology – a bisexual girl is thrilled to   discover on social media that her crush is gay. Text messages and social media posts flashon screen. The word 'fuck' is used a lot. In some stories, music makesthe heart grow fonder. But this celebration of youth in the first flushof amour falters because the writing is so banal.  Sample some of the dialogue. In Star Host, directedby Anand Tiwari and written by Saurabh Swamy  with additional writing by Aarsh Voraand Ritwiq Joshi, a wise, elderly restaurant owner gives the following advice: "Life is too shortto pass judgement on something like baingan   that you’ve never tried." Later in the film, one character refers to another as a ‘toxic tattoo’.   In She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not, directed by Danish Aslam and written by Sulagna Chatterjee,  we're told, ‘Never judge a lesbian by her cover,’ or ‘real life is this: traffic, pollution aur pyaar.’   In Ishq Mastana, directed by Jaydeep Sarkar and co-written by Jaydeep and Shubhra Chatterji,   a character says: ‘Kuch nahi badlega. Duniya fucked thi aur shayad fucked hi rahegi.’   Which made me wonder – is this true of anthologies also? Rising above the dreck is The Interview, directed by Sachin Kundalkar, who you might remember from the   intriguing Aiyyaa, in which a man’s fragrance kindles an intense love story. The Interview is less flamboyant – two candidatesarrive for a job interview at an electronics store.   The girl, played by Zayn Marie Khan, is smarter, more ambitious and determined. The boy, played by   Neeraj Madhav, is from Kerala. New to Mumbai, he is hesitant and conscious of his accent.   But as they wait for their turn, she tutors him and they find a hint of a friendship. Sachin and co-writer Arati Raval layer in commentary about Mumbai’s inherent cosmopolitan textures. The struggle to find a foothold in thecity and the gaping distance between the lives of salespeople and the dreams they are selling. Unlike the other films, there is a sting in this story, which only makes it sweeter. You might also find a lingering sweetness in Tahira Kashyap Khurrana’s Quaranteen Crush. The title is a tad too cute but Mihir Ahuja as Maninder, a fumbling, bumbling, besotted boy, makes up for it. The story, by Gazal Dhaliwal, also makes room for a fun, overbearing mother who has her own aspirations to bea YouTube star – tadke ki maharani Manjeet. Incidentally the songs in the film have been composed by Ayushmann Khurrana and Sameer Kaushal. If you're really interested in a story about young love that will get under your skin,   may I suggest Rani in the Amazon Primeanthology called Aanum Pennum which means Man and Woman in Malayalam.  Directed by Aashiq Abu, the film is about two college students  who head to a scenic but remote spot with sex on their minds. What happens next is unexpected, wickedly funny and frightening. Aashiq gives the story   Biblical underpinnings and the actors – Roshan Mathew and Darshana Rajendran – are terrific. Feels Like Ishq has little of this subversion,irreverence or messiness.  You can watch the film on Netflix India.