Gehraiyaan

“A smarty-pants, lathery relationship drama that labours under the delusion that it is giving the genre a massive makeover, Gehraiyaan isn’t unlike the rented yacht on which many of the film’s key scenes take place. For all its fancy trappings, the film is all at sea… uses the cliched device of crashing ocean waves to symbolise the swelling passion of two young people who stray away from their chosen partners, but the plot is about as deep as a muddy swamp.”

Rating: 2 stars | Full review

“Gehraiyaan deserves two slaps, but I am giving it two stars because of the valiant efforts of Deepika Padukone, and Ananya Pandey (to a small extent), who carry the bojh of this film on their toned shoulders. Also because Kushal Shah with his smart cinematography and Nitesh Bhatia’s intelligent editing try to inject some soul into this rather vacuous affair. “

Rating: 2 stars | Full review

“A movie about chaotic characters and conflicting feelings, it unfolds with admirable simplicity. It simmers at the right pace, and even when it starts to boil, that transformation feels natural – even expected.”

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“Deepika Padukone found her groove a while ago. But when a performance feels like a person, it’s artistry at an altogether different level. As Alisha, she’s raw yet polished, fierce yet soft, volatile yet suppressed, a woman willing to flex herself in every sense of the word. She embodies to perfection the Gehraiyaan in the title.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review

“The difference between the bulk of Kashyap’s body of work so far and Batra’s Gehraiyaan lies in the reality that no character in Gehraiyaan is a gangster or hardened criminal or an overtly conscienceless soul. These are ‘normal’ folk, People Like Us so to speak… Padukone is all kinds of breathtaking in the role of Alisha, a troubled woman whose frustration with her situation leads her down a path of recklessness that, on the face of it, is not in her nature. Or is it?”

Rating: 4 stars | Full review

“The outsiders of Gehraiyaan are not handled with kid gloves. They are cleverly cast, and the writing sets out to investigate their truth. Most of all, they are both victims and villains of their own fate… The film-making preys on the moral tension of our universe. We’re so invested in the audacity of straying that, at some point, adultery morphs into agency. We try to understand why people react rather than how they act. Every other scene is a composition of identity and time. Things are in control till they’re not; characters are genuine till they’re not. Nobody behaves like a “type” – manipulative, insecure, naive, funny – because people are products of their impulses.”

Rating: stars | Full review

“The foursome… should have been a throbbing hot mess, but the film doesn’t go deep enough.”

Rating: 2 stars | Full review

“This is really a film about young, cold, clinical, professional ambitions at the base. Something we don’t usually watch messing with movie romances, about good-looking desi people, in general.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review

“There aren’t a whole lot of Hindi films on infidelity… and nearly all are about how cheating will make you miserable. Gehraiyaan is almost instantly miserable, yet it gets right the small acts of deception that support a larger one… Padukone demonstrates again how, if nothing else, she’s one of the great criers in Hindi film history.”

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“One wonders what was going on in the minds of the makers that they made such a torturous film that simply numbs the mind.”

Rating: 1 star | Full review