Haseen Dillruba

“Taapsee Pannu plays Rani with all the flair at her command…. She shines in the pivotal role.”

Rating: 2.5 stars | Full review

“Taapsee Pannu sticks to a limited set of expressions and actions to convey her character’s turmoil.”

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“Pannu’s delivery is exactly the same in her films: only the costumes change.”

Rating: 2 stars | Full review

“Haseen Dillruba’s romanticising of toxic relationships and dangerous view of seeing cruelty as a form of caring wanders off from its dirty book context to sudden profundity. The only reason it doesn’t feel as absurd as it really is because Taapsee and Vikrant are in complete sync with Rani and Rishu’s staggeringly volatile personality. The actors make sense even when their actions do not.”

Rating: stars | Full review

“The pallid writing perhaps explains Pannu’s deadpan performance here. It is nice to see a woman actor listed first in a film’s credits, going against the Bollywood norm of giving a man pride of place in cast lists, but I do wish this particular woman had not picked this particular film, especially considering that a sequence featuring a loving wife running after her husband with his purse every morning as he leaves for office in Haseen Dillruba almost seems designed as a spoof of an insightful motif in her earlier film Thappad that served as a commentary on man-woman equations in traditional, patriarchal Indian homes.”

Rating: 1 star | Full review

“Perhaps a big reason Haseen Dillruba survives its own rubble is the performances. Taapsee Pannu’s role is a comic-book riff on her Manmarziyaan persona; it’s disarming to see her succumb to the Tamasha-ness of a script. The bubbly Delhi “firecracker” is a done-to-death caricature, but Pannu – as evidenced in thrillers like Badla – manages to manifest a greyness that straddles the human bridge between empowerment and frailty. She plays a woman who wants to feel like a heroine, and not vice versa.”

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