Rules of modern love rewritten

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Romcom, or romantic comedy, is a lazy, loathsome tag, but it’s come to stay because certain films defy explanation. They just have to be categorised and dismissed. In the broadest sense then, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu is a romcom, but it rewrites the rules of the game of love and does so with such cleverness, care and wry mournfulness that it makes you bleat with joy.
Ek Main... is not a parody. It’s just very modern and with serious street cred.

Rahul Kapoor (Imran Khan), 25, is the son of rich, controlling parents who are also emotional amputees. Dad, Mr Kapoor (Boman Irani), is into making his son feel miserable, always picking special moments to encourage self-loathing. Mom, Mrs Kapoor (Ratna Pathak), is into styling Rahul into a dashing showpiece for her parties — someone who chews each mouthful 32 times and has a hip haircut. Together, Mr and Mrs Kapoor have it all planned out — Rahul’s career, his life, his wife, even his wardrobe.
So Rahul, the dutiful good boy, is working at an architecture firm in Las Vegas. This is part of his training before he takes over daddy’s business in Mumbai. But Rahul is morose and he is entirely average. The thought of living life as per his parents’ wishes depresses him; disappointing them scares him shitless.
We learn all this from by way of a voiceover — Rahul’s own. Beginning with his childhood, we see family snapshots, Addams Family like, and his life’s story unfolds in a slow, melancholic rhythm. When Rahul is with his parents, there are splendid, rich interiors, all steel, glass and gold. There are crowded rooms with show-offy things and loud north Indians. His own spaces are quiet, bare, neat, with unending escalators and large windows from which he can see the outside.
One Christmas weekend, when his parents are in town, Rahul gets the sack. The timing is perfect for Riana Braganza (Kareena Kapoor) to come gliding on her electric standing scooty. Sipping a strawberry shake and with red streaks in her hair, she crashes through his glass window almost without noticing.
She is a 26-year-old out of job hairstylist who plans to spend the New Year’s with her parents in Mumbai.
We don’t know much about her except that she is a bindaas babe who has just dumped her cheating boyfriend and has no money. We also learn that she’s had many boyfriends, though we don’t meet any. She’s had sex, too, but we don’t see her sweating. We don’t even visit where she stays in Vegas. These deliberate omissions make her the flighty, ethereal sort.
Rahul and Riana are complete opposites. She doesn’t like her men anal; he irons his underwear. She’s like a jar of soap bubbles — sticky, full of surprises and happiest when floating about; he is the aunty with a napkin, quick to catch and wipe the drip from the bubble jar.
Rahul is helpful, chivalrous; she mistakes him for a stalker and hits him. But it’s Christmas and they are alone in Vegas. So they go out, get drunk and end up where all tipsy people end up in Vegas — at one of those ubiquitous 24-hour wedding chapels. We know where most movies go after this. Ek Main... pretends that it’s headed in the same direction but only to surprise us and challenge our conventional ideas of happy endings.
About time, I say, someone changed the stock coital climax of all boy-meets-girl stories. This one tells a love story that is more like ours.

According to one version of music folklore, Paul McCartney wrote the lines Hey Jude, don’t make it bad/Take a sad song and make it better after he met young Julian, the lonely, sad son of John Lennon. Writer-director Shakun Batra probably wrote Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu after an encounter with a single south Mumbai child of pushy, loaded parents, because Rahul's ennui here is all too believable.
Batra’s film has a dark, almost neurotic edge, when it’s with Rahul and his parents. Though the disconnect in the family is presented via comic scenes, there is a disturbing sadness that gets wedged in our head. These scenes, each marked with Woody Allen-esqe agoraphobia, collapse the distance between Rahul and us and make it easy for us accept Riana, a screaming, blustery, hop-skip-jump girl. She is doing the job for us, of saving Rahul from himself. But the film doesn’t stop here. At the end, after its cute twist, it seems that she who has had six bad relationships needs Rahul more than he needs her.
Ek Main’s... brilliance lies in the way a regular story is told, along with inspired music from Amit Trivedi, catchy lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya and clever camera work.
Though plotted a bit like (500) Days Of Summer (only this one is chronological), Ek Main... is packed with whacky scenes, including a delightful one that involves one horny lady, a toilet and a hygiene faucet.
I don’t usually like Imran Khan. He is too cute and cartoonish with his animated brows and pouting pink lips. But here he is very well cast and plays Rahul with unusual restrain. Kareena Kapoor is in her Jab We Met element. Lovely, endearing and spreading happiness all around. Her clothes here are secondary to her character and acting and that helps. Smart, sharp dialogue and quirky scenes breathe life into their characters, as they do in the supporting characters. Pop and Mom Braganza are nutty and warm, while Rahul’s parents and their friends are caricatures of people we have met. Some are intentionally flat, like Mr Kapoor. Boman Irani comes across as someone whose facade is of a dapper man but the back, if you bothered to look, is a bleached cardboard. Ratna Pathak does her Sarabhai number with her usual wicked brilliance.
In all, a very fine debut from director Shakun Batra.