Udita Jhunjhunwala

Author Helen Fielding’s first novel about a single, thirty-something woman living in London was released in 1996. The novel was adapted into a movie in 2001, with the heroine of Bridget Jones’s Diary returning in a movie sequel titled Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in 2004. American actress Renée Zellweger has starred as Bridget Jones in all four films based on Fielding’s writing, which, in part, is the writer’s homage to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s no coincidence that Bridget’s love interest is called Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, who famously portrayed Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 1995 TV adaptation of Austen’s novel. The latest, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, is the fourth film (the last was Bridget Jones’s Baby, from 2016) about the life and loves of Bridget Jones. Michael Morris directs a screenplay by Fielding, Dan Mazer, and Abi Morgan. The film explores themes of loss, resilience, and self-discovery while still delivering the trademark awkwardness and comedic situations that have defined Bridget’s character.

Director Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, in partnership with writer Kireet Khurana, has extended Satyajit Ray’s short story Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro into The Storyteller, a 116-minute drama available on Disney+ Hotstar. Tarini Bandopadhyay (Paresh Rawal) is a recently retired writer, whose longest assignment lasted 13 weeks. He’s a widower who is content with his Calcutta life and takes meticulous care of his Ambassador car. Conversations with his fellow comrades, over fish fry and fish curry, are rarely without mention of Capitalism and its ills and almost always end with ‘Tarini tales’. Tarini is a wonderful storyteller. Even after his wife gifted him a pen to encourage him, Tarini never recorded his imaginative and original stories.

From the title itself, it’s a giveaway that this romcom is going to be rife in clichés and oozing cheesiness. In that sense, writer-director Victor Mukherjee’s 107-minute-long film does not disappoint. Kenneth ‘Kenny’ Fernandes (Amol Parashar) is a recycle artist and social media influencer who is nursing a broken heart and often posts philosophical and pensive posts about dreams, feelings etc. These read like memes or the kind of ‘good quotes’ one could Google up. But what is baffling Kenny at this time, is a recurring dream featuring a date with an attractive young woman in a coffee shop. Said woman does exist. Somewhere else, an aspiring and ambivalent musician called Diya Jaisingh (Mithila Palkar) is experiencing the same dream, featuring Kenny and the same coffee shop.

“This will be a tour about pain,” cautions James, the earnest British guide shepherding a group of American Jews on a tour of Poland. The small group includes David and Benji, two cousins from New York on a visit to Poland to honour their recently deceased grandmother Dori, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust. Best known for this starring role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in this holocaust comedy playing David, who like Eisenberg, suffers from OCD and anxiety disorder. David has a regular job, a wife and child and uses pills to deal with his anxiety. He’s socially awkward and envies Benji’s ease and charm. Benji road-rolls his cousin and trivialises his life choices.

Writer-director Shuchi Talati’s debut feature is a simmering and sexually tense coming of age drama. Set in a boarding school, the story is centred around Mira, a school topper, head prefect and teacher’s pet. She’s driven to excel and considers herself the model student, upholder of school rules and moral gatekeeper. So, it’s confusing for the obedient and righteous Mira to be faced with challenges outside of the curriculum and to realise that book-learned knowledge might be no match against street smarts, life experience and generational patriarchal conditioning.

The second season of the Prime Video series Bandish Bandits opens in Jodhpur, three months after Radhe (Ritwik Bhowmik) has been crowned Sangeet Samrat. In the previous season, battle lines were drawn between rival gharanas represented by Radhe and his grandfather Radhemohan (Naseeruddin Shah) on the one side and Radhemohan’s estranged son Digvijay (Atul Kulkarni) on the other. With the passing of the patriarch, the responsibility for the Rathod gharana rests on Radhe’s shoulders. Radhe is also contending with new and confusing feelings after Tammana (Shreya Chaudhry) walks away from their fusion band Bandish Bandits, and her relationship with him, to find her own voice.

Being a child star is not a thing to envy. Judy, a musical drama, is both a warm and loving tribute to the actor and singer Judy Garland as well as a cautionary tale about the pressures and impact of celebrity. Born Frances Ethel Gumm, Garland worked as an actor, dancer and singer for 45 of the 47 years she lived. The film opens with a 14-year-old Judy (Darci Shaw) being cast to play what would become the iconic part of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. The pressure of early stardom and humiliation fuelled insecurities as a harsh studio executive listed out her physical flaws. He described her as above average but exceptional because of her singing voice. A studio minder offered her pills to suppress her appetite and pills to help her sleep at night.

In the late 1970s, the king of Bhutan coined the term “gross national happiness". GNH parameters are used to measure progress, well-being and happiness, placing their importance over economic pursuits alone. This programme has been pivotal in shaping development policies and governance in Bhutan, a landlocked nation in eastern Himalayas that is often ranked as one of the happiest in the world. Happiness surveyor Amber Kumar Gurung of the Happiness Centre is the subject of a new documentary, Agent of Happiness (in competition at the MAMI Mumbai film festival 2024).