Pyaarnama Packs a Punch

Last week at my friend Bedi’s place I caught Pyaar Ka Punchnama, minute-for-minute the year’s most enjoyable film so far.

Let me give you a piece of advice on watching this movie: do not watch it with your significant other. This may be advice that everyone and their security guard must have told you many times, but there’s a reason to it.

Every relationship is based on a carefully concocted edifice of lies. A relationship works because of all the little things that one does not tell one’s partner – all the little irritants, annoyances and niggles that flesh is heir to. The passion is kept alive when one keeps the ointment painstakingly fly-free. And this movie takes a 5k HMI light to the murky corners of romantic relationships.

The movie tells the tale of 3 young men who each manage to entangle themselves romantically with 3 young women. Each of them then embark on a dark and dreary voyage of self-flagellation and denigration – through the appropriate agents manifested in their girlfriends – before finally realising that relationships suck, or at any rate, they suck at relationships.

Pyaar Ka Punchnama also dares to bring out the way women act in a relationship. It’s all very well to be from Venus, but these women go all Klingon on the Martians. The constant logic-defying arguments, the little plays of emotional blackmail, the big twist of the Guilt knife in the guy’s gut – all things that every man has faced in life, at least once. So one dame starts living with her man, makes him forgo the boy-bonding and bromance that had made his life worth living and keeps him at home like her pet. Another one uses her smitten to get her work done at the office and then cosy up to her real boyfriend out of town while Office Boy gets her work done at home. The third meticulously places one foot in our man’s boat while still having one planted in her ex’s.

The stories are all well told, all relatable, all more or less true. It traces the differences in behaviour of the sexes through the eyes of men, and this time it’s not very funny. Which is the success of this film: it takes dark, bleak tales and turns them into black comedies. The director Luv Ranjan does a great job in making sure the characters are well-defined, the stories not only well-connected but flowing logically (or at least empirically) and keeps the ends apology- and happy-ending-free.

The performances are competent, except a couple of the women; the men manage to convey their haplessness and despair quite well, and the bro-bonding is peppy and effervescent. The direction is tight, the script makes sense and the humour is seamlessly weaved into the movie.

There are a couple of things that met the eye – forcefully:

1. Why does Chaudhary (Raayo Bhakirta) walk around in undies all the time? I mean, yeah, all that hostel-type bro-bonding guff is fine, but I live in a house with another 2 guys and I don’t walk around in my und… oh, actually I do, but they’re boxers, not briefs.

2. The “Kutta” song. I love it, it’s beautifully sung, self-deprecating and totally a kick in the teeth for girlfriends. And the lyrics are strange:

Gadhe ke poot, yahan mat moot
Gadhe ke poot, yahan mat moot
Sunn le baat tu meri nahin to
Teri maa ki chooo-dee.

3. The director seems to have a very large bone to pick with women in general; as Mika says in his interview, “(director) ki khaas baat yeh hai, bahut sadta hai ladkiyon se”. Must’ve been taken through the grinder, twisted over, taken through the grinder the other way. Poor guy.

To some, this is extremely misogynistic; how can you showcase women as evil, conniving bitches? Well, why not, if they behave like that some times? Also, it’s more about men not understanding how women function, how their minds work in ways different to men’s. Every guy goes through this rite of passage – the first relationship is where you learn the ropes, learn how to deal with guilt, emotional blackmail, the feeling that if this one leaves, I won’t get another one. I agree with all of it, except that in some women, one sees lighter shades of dark; some women are not the devil incarnate, raving succubi intent on vacuuming the self-respect of their men. Luv Ranjan fails to see the humanity hidden deep inside women. Maybe because it’s hidden so deep inside.