Netflix's Aap Jaisa Koi Movie Review: R. Madhavan-Fatima Sana Shaikh will make you believe that there is nothing like age-appropriate love

Cast: R. Madhavan, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Ayesha Raza, Manish Chaudhari, Namit Das, Kumar Kanchan Ghosh and more

Director: Vivek Soni

Language: Hindi and Bengali

Love truly has no language, colour, region, religion or even age. And there is nothing like a perfect love life. The story of Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh) and Shrirenu Tripathi (R. Madhavan) shows the love of two opposite people with absolutely different backgrounds and culture, with a huge age gap, coming together.

The movie shows a dash of patriarchy too in a typical middle-class Indian household where women are considered to be of questionable character if they play cards, laugh loudly, love passionately, love their wine, and most importantly, have a strong political opinion. These are the women; men are threatened by because they never shy away from participating in any heated conversation and voicing their opinion.

Mind you, if you are not a virgin even at the age of thirty-four, you will surely have to go through a series of character assassinations. Well, Fatima Sana Shaikh plays the role of a Bong thirty-four-year-old French teacher from Kolkata who knows how to love fearlessly, and that’s where the problem starts.

She is labelled as ‘shameless’ and even ’loose-charactered’ for being on a dating app. Forget about being sexually active; how can a woman ever dare to be on a dating app? That’s a man’s place, isn’t it, and how dare you overstep? She is often questioned about her virginity too because men like Shrirenu, or for that matter his elder brother, Bhanu, played by Manish Chaudhari, like women to be fresh and unspoiled. Women being free-spirited and independent is considered to be a sin for men like Bhanu (Manish Chaudhari).

The story goes this way: Madhu Bose (Fatima Sana Shaikh), a French teacher from Kolkata, meets Shrirenu Tripathi ( R. Madhavan ), a Sanskrit teacher from Jamshedpur on a dating site, and she falls in love with him instantly. But Shrirenu doesn’t know about it.

Madhu comes from a progressive Bong family. And Shrirenu Tripathi comes from a typical North Indian family where women are made to slog in the kitchen and men are supposed to have all the fun. Not being judgmental about a typical North Indian household, but that’s how the film tries to show it. Like all his other films, in Aap Jaisa Koi  too, actor Manish Chaudhari personifies patriarchy. Madhavan’s photographer friend played by Namit Das also does a brilliant job of a misogynist who is a shade better than the character played by Manish Chaudhari.

Though Shrirenu is different and doesn’t fall exactly in a patriarchal setup, he is a chronic bachelor at 42 who is scared of even interacting with women. Women don’t find him appealing; they find Shrirenu to be aadbhut (weird). It is only Madhu who found this characteristic of him to be attractive. His honesty makes Madhu fall in love with him. He, too, is completely smitten by her. But then what changes for Shrirenu? For that you need to watch Aap Jaisa Koi on Netflix.

The visuals of Aap Jaisa Koi are beautiful; sometimes the Victoria Memorial in the backdrop will bring back fond memories, and again there is something very romantic about the Calcutta monsoon, just like Bombay monsoons. The Coffee House in College Street, where Madhu and Shrirenu meet for the first time, has an old-world charm, and those belonging to Calcutta will understand the magic of this place even better. Here you don’t get tea, but coffee, and that’s the reason it is called Coffee House. And this place is nothing fancy like our present-day cafes.

The discussion about food like hilsa and sandesh (a popular Bengali sweet) will make you salivate. In a Bong household food plays a very important part, and that’s what director of the film Vivek Soni is trying to show. But yes, there are some Bengali stereotypes too that are shown in the movie.

Coming to the performances, Madhavan has played the role of middle-aged Shrirenu from an industrial city, Jamshedpur, perfectly, and why not? He has spent some part of his life there. But the problem was with Fatima Sana Sheikh, though she tried hard, her Bong diction wasn’t perfect, and especially if you are depicting the role of a Bengali girl who is born and brought up in Calcutta, you need to know the language well, and no amount of cotton sarees draped perfectly and impeccably matched with printed blouses can salvage that.

No matter how hard you try to romanticise the Bong culture, this is where the film faltered. There is a lack of depth in the characterisation and depiction of Madhu Bose. I am not saying that there is something disastrously wrong in the depiction of Netflix’s Aap Jaisa Koi, but it definitely could have been better!

But the most impactful part of the film is when Shrirenu says to Madhu Bose, “Everything is fine, but you need to be within your limits.” So, is it the man in the relationship who decides the limit of a woman?

Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars)

Aap Jaisa Koi is streaming on Netflix