Mr Singh Mrs Mehta Review

Story: Mr. Singh (Naved Aslam) and Mrs. Mehta (Lucy Hassan) are having an extra-marital affair, despite being ostensibly happy with their respective marriages. This causes Mrs. Singh (Aruna Shields) and Mr. Mehta (Prashant Narayanan) to be drawn to each other and seek comfort in each other's company. It's a complicated quartet that tries to cope with the pain of infidelity, love and illicit longing.

Movie Review: Considering that Bollywood has so few adult films to offer, this one's a rare experience. And the fact that it is dealt with a degree of understatement and maturity, with a great music score (Ustad Shujat Hussain Khan and Sharang Dev) to translate the emotional quotient on to the screen, makes it a decent watch. Of course, we would have liked a bit more passion to flow between the protagonists, Mr Mehta and Mrs Singh (Prashant and Aruna) and have definitely liked Mrs Singh to stop falling asleep so often in Mr Mehta's studio, but we are willing to forgive her this accentuated listlessness too. Why? Because when she's not sobbing or sleeping, she's playing a passable wife interrupted, wondering how to cope with her `victim' status, without losing her self-esteem.

But the more interesting -- and complicated -- character is Mr Mehta. An artist by profession, he spends most of his time dabbling with colours in his desolate studio, splashing oodles of paint on his finished and unfinished paintings. Creating and destroying, all at the same time. And when he's not doing this, he's going on long, lonely drives across verdant landscape in search of a muse. Needless to say, he finds the muse back in his studio and it doesn't take long before he is painting piquant nudes of Mrs Singh who also gradually begins to enjoy her naughty dalliance with this rare kinda suitor who is willing to paint her nails, when he's not painting her. The duo begin as the victimised twosome, but soon the lines begin to interestingly blur. Who exactly is the fall guy -- and girl -- in this complicated foursome? More importantly, who is cheating and who is being cheated upon in this film which actually isn't about Mr Singh and Mrs Mehta. It's about Mrs Singh and Mr Mehta who play the game of infidelity with a degree of artistry and subterfuge, adding some strange twists and turns to what would otherwise have ended up as a predictable tale about dangerous liaisons.