Chand Mera Dil

Aarav (Lakshya) and his wife, Chandni (Ananya Panday), are cracking under the strain of caring for a newborn. Their frustrations boil over into an ugly yelling match. Aarav grabs her face. He’s motionless for a few seconds, then backs away, mortified. She runs into the other room and balls up in a corner, shaking in shock as he begs her to open the door. The moment when Aarav grabs Chandni is in the film’s trailer. I think it’s there because Dharma doesn’t mind giving the impression that this will be an ‘intense’ love story in the key of Sandeep Vanga or the Anand L Rai/Dhanush collaborations. Yet, Chand Mera Dil is nothing like those films, treating the brief physical contact with utter seriousness. Aarav is immediately contrite, but it doesn’t matter. The entire story turns on this moment. PSA films like Thappad are lauded for presenting characters who won’t stand for any kind of abuse, but Chand Mera Dil is equally steadfast without resorting to moral grandstanding.

When the end is obvious with a title that gives away where the hero is headed, writer-director Vivek Soni’s screenplay should’ve been dramatically different, offering an unseen experience at every major turn. Let’s check how he goes about it. It’s one long predictable flashback to Hyderabad where Chandni (Ananya Panday) and Aarav (Lakshya) are engineering students, both brilliant. There’s a fresh touch to the attraction where they twin every day, wearing the same colour, without a word exchanged between them. Until Chandni takes the first step. So far, rather nice. The good is that there is definite chemistry between Chandni and Aarav, leading to relatable intimacy.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” said William Shakespeare. And in an average Hindi film, it often is too tortuous, if not torturous. ‘Chand Mera Dil’, the title, promises a film high on the gossamer shades of romance. Only, as the film opens, for a long time, the only shades you see are the matching colours of our hero and heroine’s outfits. Love-struck Aarav (Lakshya Lalwani) starts twinning with Chandni (Ananya Panday). Obviously, his outfit shade card — ranging from neon and fluorescent yellow to pinks — not only matches her clothes but catches her attention too.

Romance, they say, dies in the first chapter of marriage. In what passes for an “adult romance” in Chand Mera Dil, marriage dies in the first chapter of marriage. Or, does it? You can’t be sure. Never mind their previous productions, director/co-writer Vivek Soni (Meenakshi Sundareshwar) and writers Tushar Paranjape (Killa), Akshat Ghildial (Badhaai Do) don’t seem to know where or whether they are coming or going in this one. Their lead pair, untested in the adulting department, just don’t have it in them to steer through this mess. Aarav (Lakshya) and Chandni (Ananya Panday) meet at an aesthete engineering college in Hyderabad. To attract her, he “twins”, that is, wears the same colours as her, every single day. When he doesn’t go further than that, she takes the initiative, and soon enough they are a couple.

Love stories must return to Bollywood. In an era of toxic masculinity and mind-numbing violence that dominate the box office today, the soothing familiarity of the romantic films of the late ’90s and early 2000s seems like an inviting proposition. Additionally, a millennial like me would want Dharma Productions to support this cause along with Yash Raj Films for simply having set romance ideals through their films. I could sense that from my smile when the opening credits of Chand Mera Dil flashed Karan Johar’s name. The floodgates of movie memories opened until the last slate revealed the director’s name: Vivek Soni. Could he do a decent romance, never mind cult-worthy?

At a time when mainstream romance usually oscillates between airbrushed fantasy and comedy, with a dash of toxic masculinity, Vivek Soni’s Chand Mera Dil arrives as a grounded, mature counter-narrative. It subverts the grammar of a Bollywood musical melodrama, or what we call the Dharma production tropes, to deliver a sharp dissection of modern intimacy with a melancholic flourish. After a long time, a love story doesn’t dump career and bread and butter issues. Aarav (Lakshya) and Chandni (Ananya Panday) are not flaky cardboards. Besides the raging hormones, they come across as believable engineering students facing rigorous academic pressures. They do not drop out when life gets messy. The writing (Vivek, Tushar Paranjpe, and Akshat Ghildiyal) respects their intellect and ambition, showing that pursuing career ambitions isn’t an alternative to a love story, or vice versa. It is a heavy framework within which the love story must exist, and Ananya Panday and Lakshya strike a delicate equilibrium to anchor the film’s transition from a lyrical college romance into a stark, mature reality. They establish an effortless physical and emotional intimacy early on, making the eventual fracture sting all the more.