SMALL TOWN KIDS WITH BIG AMBITIONS

romance with the juices trickling down its frames. It conveys just the right ingredients of smothered passion and unabashed swagger to make the proceedings pungent and real.

All through the playing time of this tightly-wound but loosely-structured love story, I was sure of one thing. That this is Tigmanshu's most accomplished work since Paan Singh Tomar - smartly written, wisely punctuated and sharply cut, it does everything right even when the characters go horribly wrong in their judgement. Watch the magnificent Ashutosh Rana bellow against destiny when he curses the day he married off his daughter to an impotent goonda. It's a moment of reckoning in a film that revels in revelations, none surprising, but all delightful.

There is no doubt in our minds that the small-town lovers would be finally united in true blue filmy fashion in this film filled with filmy characters, none more filmy than wannabe filmmaker hero's father played with sassy self-mockery by director Tigmanshu Dhulia. The director plays the hero's father as a man lost in the movies of the 1970s not quite connected with the real world outside and hence frozen in a childlike state of existence.

Milan Talkies

STARRING: Ali Faizal, Shraddha Srinath, Ashutosh Rana, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sanjai Mishra

DIRECTOR: Tigmanshu Dhulia

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"I've heard," says the inexperienced loverboy, "that in the beginning of a romance

22 Yards

STARRING: Barun Sobti, Amartya Ray, Chaiti Ghoshal, Rajit Kapoor, Panchi Bora, Geetika Tyagi, Rajeev Sharma

DIRECTOR: Mitali Ghoshal

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22 Yards is a cricket film that's not actually about cricket. The actual game takes up less than 15 minutes in the film's 124-minute run time.

This sports drama is more of behindthe-scenes events, an exploration of power and the personal struggle of a sports management agent.

The film begins on a tacky note with sweeping stock shots and shifty camera shots giving you insights intothe euphoria as well as the hysteria that surrounds cricket in the country.

The tensions are apparent from the very first scene in the washroom where a successful sports management agent Ronajit Sen (Barun Sobti) subtly chastises his opponent Ravi Khanna (Rajeev Sharma) and his lackey and later on in the stadium when a senior sports journalist Rica (Geetika Tyagi) snubs green horn Sonali (Panchi Bora). These two scenes sets the ball rolling. Conversations and associations there is a lot of sex. And then it wears down to just once in a while on Karwa Chauth or whatever."

Hearing Ali Fazal drawl these words of artless candour in the projection room of a single-theatre in Allahabad, is a pleasure beyond measure.

Milan Talkies a spiffily written, expertly enacted, small-town hormonal

It's a fascinating study of how Hindi cinema impacts and influences small-town lives, done with dollops of brusque humour and tongue-in-cheek drama. Till midpoint Dhulia builds the budding romance between Ali Fazal and debutant Shraddha Srinath (both charming, together and apart, though neither is as exceptional as the supporting cast) like scenes borrowed from the collective consciousness of a