Girl meets boy story…but who minds!

Manpriya Singh 

That’s a bit like sticking our neck out with the unlikely comparison but Chandigarh Amritsar Chandigarh is to Amritsar what the Before Sunrise series is to, well, Paris. Now down to the similarities. Both the films span over a day, are about a meet-cute between a boy and girl, and capture the bitter sweet conversations in the narrow lanes of their respective city, Amritsar or Paris. Many a film across the universe have gone down this lane, a girl meets guy, accidentally.

Ends up spending the day with him, incidentally, and of course, ends up falling in love with him, understandably. Commercial script, safe storyline.  However, Chandigarh Amritsar Chandigarh will prove how ‘been there done that’ is not a bad thing, provided it’s a different journey each time. Because it is all about characters, their chemistry, and a little about the script and how all three of them play. 

So, here you go—Sargun Mehta is a Chandigarh di kudi, Gippy Grewal is an Amritsar da munda and that’s a fact you’ll hear about twenty, no wait throughout the runtime of the film, but still you’ll not tire of it.

We don’t get to know their real names because that’s unnecessary in the script. You see he is an Amritsar guy and she’s a Chandigarh girl and that shall suffice. If you must still name them, then just add hashtag city. 

The girl (Sargun Mehta) is out to personally reject a guy her parents have selected for her. Of course, she bumps into boy (Gippy Grewal) and that’s when the cultural nuances of the two cities start playing. For instance, Chandigarh girls are quite uninhibited and like to go clubbing. Whereas Amritsar youngsters are “sanskari” so they go to nightclubs during the day only. Not funny? But trust when Gippy Grewal delivers the dialogue, it is. Amritsar is a city of food lovers, so much so that direction to every house entails a benchmark of either a cart of kulchas or bhaturas. 

Rajpal Yadav, as the only prominent third character in the film, a rickshaw-walla, does his job well. The narrow lanes of Amritsar are well captured, almost airbrushed good kind of way. The streets selling papads to suits are the ones you want to visit, never mind the heat. The only thing that doesn’t quite add up is their few fights in the short duration of the film and how they easily make-up. Leave each other for good and again find each other on the next street. But then you don’t actually bend at the ticket window for the thrill of real life drama. For a slice of fantasy is what you’ll get with this one. 

manpriya@tribunemail.com