Ankahi Kahaniya movie review: Of mannequins, men, infidelity and urban angst

Language: Hindi  There is a wisecrack ready and waiting to be made by any (re)viewer who does not like this film: “Ankahi Kahaniya  translates to Untold Stories and perhaps they should have remained that way –  ankahi  and  ansuni  (untold and unheard).” You will not read that line from me though. Figure out for yourself if it fits.   Ankahi Kahaniya  is a compilation of three films, with a running time between 30 and 40 minutes each, bound by a thread of urban angst. The first directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari ( Nil Battey Sannata,   _Panga_ ) is the story of a youth from rural Madhya Pradesh who is a salesperson in a Mumbai garments store where he develops a relationship with a pretty mannequin. The next, helmed by Abhishek Chaubey ( Dedh Ishqiya,   _Sonchiriya_ ), is about an attraction that develops between an impoverished staffer at a movie theatre and a regular member of the audience. Saket Chaudhary (Pyaar Ke Side Effects,   _Hindi Medium_ ) holds the reins of the last chapter about two people who discover that their respective spouses are having an affair with each other.   Abhishek Banerjee stars in Iyer Tiwari’s short as Pradeep Lahoria, a man so lonely in the metropolis he has made his home that he chats with the lifeless figure on which women’s clothes are draped to draw customers to his shop. He even gives her a name, and confides in her about the contrast between the people in Mumbai and his village.   Iyer Tiwari has a penchant for outliers in bustling cities that was evident in her lovely debut feature   Nil Battey Sannata  in which Swara Bhasker played a domestic worker in Agra who wants her daughter to have an education and big dreams. The director brings the same interest to this short film written by Piyush Gupta, Shreyas Jain and Nitesh Tiwari (three of the four co-writers of   _Dangal_ , which the latter directed). Her trademark low-key storytelling and the casting are on point, but the concept is far from unique.   [caption id=“attachment_9972731” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Abhishek Banerjee in Ankahi Kahaniya[/caption] Humans in relationships with mannequins, robots and even a computer programme have been done repeatedly by cinema worldwide, including in India. Read:  Mannequin,  Lars and the Real Girl  starring Ryan Gosling, Spike Jonze’s heart-wrenching  Her, Shankar’s   _Enthiran _  and more. Much of the new film’s appeal comes from Banerjee who is without question one of Hindi cinema’s most versatile emerging character artistes. If the same actor can play the comical coward he was in   _Stree_ , the terrifying prisoner in   _Paatal Lok_   and the pathetic Pradeep without reducing him to a caricaturish creep, you have to know he is special. His presence and an air of poignance sustain this part of Ankahi Kahaniya, but the needlessly explanatory concluding monologue assigned to Pradeep is a downer, coming across as an attempt to spoonfeed viewers instead of leaving us to interpret his relationships as we please.  

It is but natural that in most anthologies, there will be one film that outshines the rest, but this is not the case with  Ankahi Kahaniya  – each of these three shorts is equally moderately likeable and equally unenthusing.

Abhishek Chaubey had the distinction of making the stand-out segment in   _Ray_ , that other Netflix anthology released earlier this year and based on Satyajit Ray’s stories. Chaubey’s  Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa  starring Manoj Bajpayee and Gajraj Rao for  Ray  was glossy, funny and whimsical, in an exciting, unexpected departure from the unflinching realism that has come to be associated with him. His direction of the mid-section of  Ankahi Kahaniya  is closer to his signature style, but with mixed results. Chaubey’s film is designed as an ode to optimism that thrives even in misery. The two leads here – Manjari played by Rinku Rajguru and Nandu (Delzad Hiwale) – survive in circumstances that appear hopeless. She, for one, lives in a crummy building with a mother who, in a sense, pimps her and a brother who thinks nothing of getting violent with her while the former watches wordlessly. She, nevertheless, manages to eke joy out of her joyless situation. The spark between Manjari and Nandu gives him the impetus to shrug off the inertia that has pervaded his life until then.     [caption id=“attachment_9972751” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Rinku Rajguru in Ankahi Kahaniya[/caption] This short, as per the credits, is based on the Kannada story  Madhyantara  by Jayant Kaikini and is written for the Hindi screen by Hussain Haidry and Chaubey himself. I have not been able to find an English translation of the source material, but was attracted to the film’s lotus-in-muck theme and the innocence of the protagonists.   Rajguru burst on to the national scene with a dream debut in the Marathi blockbuster   _Sairat _  (2016). Her films since then, including a couple in Hindi ( _Unpaused_ ,   _200 Halla Ho_ ), have collectively showcased her range. Her pizzazz as Manjari here is a nice foil to Hiwale’s subdued, care-worn Nandu.   However, I found his marginally changed body language towards her in a couple of scenes inconsistent with his demeanour before and after, and thus, confusing. And while her spirit in the midst of despair keeps this short going, the end is needlessly oblique, making it the exact opposite of Iyer Tiwari’s over-explained closing scene.   From poorer living quarters,  Ankahi Kahaniya  shifts to wealthier, posher spaces in the finale directed by Saket Chaudhary. Here, Zoya Hussain (who was excellent in Anurag Kashyap’s   Mukkabaaz – why don’t we see her more often on screen?) plays a wife who suspects her husband (Nikhil Dwivedi) of infidelity and seeks out the husband of the woman with whom he is cheating on her. That spouse is played by Kunal Kapoor, listed in the credits here as Kunaal with a double “a”.   [caption id=“attachment_9972721” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Kunal Kapoor and Zoya Hussain in Ankahi Kahaniya[/caption] An unlikely friendship develops between the two, and the speculation they indulge in about the cheating duo throws into relief their existing doubts – or the lack thereof – about their spouses and about themselves.   The writing of this short is somewhat thin, and the screenplay by Zeenat Lakhani and Chaudhary particularly falters with its surface treatment of Dwivedi’s character. Sketching only an outline of this unfaithful man while simultaneously giving the ‘other woman’ flesh and blood and heft, although each has more or less the same amount of screen time, is too easy a route to justifying the ultimate decisions taken by the leads regarding their marriages and each other.   Chaudhary and Lakhani made the same mistake, albeit with a gender reversal, in   _Shaadi Ke Side Effects_   (2014) that they jointly wrote and the former directed. In that film, the heroine (Vidya Balan) was pretty much forgotten by the second half. Under-writing one of a pair of individuals in a story that purportedly gives them equal representation is never okay.   Despite its flaws, Chaudhary’s short in  Ankahi Kahaniya  remains breezy because Hussain and Kapoor play off each other well. I paused for a moment after watching this film, wondering if my gentle, tolerant response is a  Navarasa Ka Side Effect. You see, I am just recovering from the Tamil Netflix anthology presented by Mani Ratnam, featuring nine films that range from misogynistic, patriarchal and casteist to pretentious, pointless and bland.  Anything  feels worthwhile in comparison. “Better than  Navarasa” is not a compliment so I will add this:  Ankahi Kahaniya  is hardly the most stirring cinema I have seen this year, but it has enough mildly engaging material and acting talent to pass muster. Ankahi Kahaniya is streaming on Netflix India. Rating: **