Bombay Rose had so much potential, as it opens by showing the titular city through brushstrokes. But all those strokes add up to an imitation of the wrong artistic style for this film. Maybe expressionist art and India can mix well if a better movie merged those seemingly different aesthetics.
India is ornate and full of details, saturated colors of its land the people living there. This film, with its block like application of color, is the exact opposite of those aesthetic qualities. It has no understanding of space and dimension, especially in relation to the characters living within it.
Gitanjali Rao also seems to rely on romance and the cliches within to attract audience sympathy. Maybe she would have done better sticking to romance involving Salim (Amit Deondi) and Kamala (Cyli Khare). But she had to add third wheels instead of developing those two central characters and their struggles.
Rao also tries to depict the realism of Mumbai’s mean streets and the characters’ myth based fantasies. Those fantasies came from different sources like literature from South Asia, history an more recently, cinema. But again, those fantasy sequences feel like unwelcome distractions from telling the core story of its leads.
The other thing that’s distracting here is the sound design, especially with a few scenes involving Kamala. Some of those scene involve an annoying eagle coming in the form of Mike (Makrand Deshpande). It’s as if this film aims to not be enjoyable for both the eyes and ears.
- Release Date: 9/7/2019
