Cine Talk The ultimate teenage rom-com

Film: Break Ke Baad

Cast: Imran Khan, Deepika Padukone, Sharmila Tagore, Lillete Dubey, Shahana Goswami, Navin Nischol, Yudhistir Urs

Writer-Director: Danish Aslam

Bollywood has a sub-genre of romanticcomedies meant for urban, chic teenagers, first pioneered with its full frontal glory by our very own coffee drinking Karan Johar. These films, and the people that inhabit it, are nothing like you have ever known, or are ever likely to know. But the reality inside it is so glossy and Cinderella-like that everyone aspires for this free floating, un-rooted, but super fun unreality.

Break Ke Baad is a fun example of that.

Aaliya (Deepika Padukone) and Abhay (Imran Khan) are childhood sweethearts whose sweet course of sugarcane love encounters the roadblock of youthful ambition. Aaliya, a fiercely independent, risktaking person decides to go to Australia to pursue her acting ambition, thus breaking the relationship. Both make mistakes, but eventually discover themselves only to realize that it’s not that easy to say ‘talaq’ to a love that has now matured.

Break Ke Baad is the ultimate, teenage, escape, love fantasy of 2010, much like Jaane Tu… in 2008 and Love Aaj Kal in 2009. These films create a magical world in which almost everything happens coincidentally, but ultimately all loose ends are tied up perfectly, so that all that you see makes sense. But we know that such a mythical unreality can exist only in Bollywood.

Yet, the film is good in its own sub-genre. The strongest part of the film is a wellbaked script; the tight, crisp, contemporary

(thankfully!) and often rooted dialogues of Renuka Kunzru are funny at times, and profound in a cliched way at others.

Yet the film will never make it to the annals of Bollywood greats. It does not have either the cuteness of Aamir Khan’s launch vehicle Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, or the undertone of class struggle depicted with extreme melodrama in Maine Pyaar Kiya; the overtone of struggle against tradition of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge or the excessive sugar-pulp and totally nonexistent reality of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (KKHH) - a film which this one pays hearty tributes to.

The conflict is mostly in the minds of the protagonist, and not real. Ironically its fault would perhaps be that it is not unreal enough like KKHH

Though the characterizations, at least in the beginning and in a few side characters, have the smell (or stench if you consider the escapist drama) of reality, it flies off