Fitoor
Year: 2016
Director: Abhishek Kapoor
Cast: Aditya Roy-Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Tabu, Aditi Rao Hayderi, Ajay Devgn

What’s the thought?

Love turns into an obsession!

What’s the plot?

It is Kashmir at the beginning of the millennium. A poor orphan boy, staying with his sister and brother-in-law, is employed as a helping hand at a sprawling mansion fast going into disrepair. His mistress (Tabu), once rich and beautiful, is now just a melancholy middle-aged lady unwilling to come out of her slowly crumbling lonely world. The boy is fascinated by her persona and moreover, he is totally smitten by her pretty daughter. The haughty heiress, who is his age, first insults him but slowly grows to be fond and friendly.  The mother rather strangely keeps encouraging their friendship, all the while reminding him that he has to become ‘worthy’ of her!

One fine day, the young daughter is packed off to London for further education. The boy is left heartbroken. He grows up to be a talented artist (Aditya Roy-Kapoor), who out of the blue gets an Arts scholarship to study and make it big in Delhi from an anonymous benefactor. There he meets his childhood sweetheart (Katrina Kaif) again. The old flame sparks up and the two start seeing each other but once again, the girl leaves him to go back to Kashmir. She is engaged to be married to a Pakistani diplomat!

Will the star-crossed lovers ever come together? Is there much more than what meets the eye in these tangled lives?

What’s hot?

·        Tabu delivers a virtuoso performance (reminiscent of her Haider role!). She stands head and shoulders above the rest. She captures the grand lady’s withering cynical mysterious persona to perfection.

·        The movie is visually full of exquisite frames. Kashmir’s snow-white beauty is picturized in its full splendor and even the other settings are quite picturesque.

·        Some sequences are well-directed and interesting.

·        Few good songs.

What’s not?

·        The story adapted from Charles Dickens’s ‘Great Expectations’ leaves many loose ends.

·        The narrative moves very slowly.

·        Director Abhishek Kapoor’s command on visual language often comes in the way of clean, uncluttered story-telling. He lets the plot wander aimlessly in the middle, focusing mainly on attractive visuals, rather than on the story or character development.

·        The lead pair of Aditya Roy-Kapoor and Katrina Kaif looks good on screen but they both can’t really pull off their characters with conviction. They have tried hard and that effort shows but it does not translate into either great performances or audience empathy with their characters’ fate.

·        Aditi Rao-Hayderi, who plays the younger Tabu’s character, typically tries to rely on her wistful looks more than anything else.

·        Ajay Devgn has an ill-defined role, a far cry from the pivotal character in the Dickens original!

Verdict

Obsessive love-stories do make interesting films, but not if their cinematic adaptation fails to generate any fire, passion or intensity. Director Abhishek Kapoor (who was quite good in Kaipo Chhe) shows flashes of his talent every now and then in Fitoor. But the painfully slow pace, unclear storytelling and mediocre performances come in the way of making it a satisfying film. If you watch it, do it only for Tabu’s super performance on the backdrop of some stunning visuals!

Rating

2 Stars