Tag Archives: Naisha Khanna

Movie Review: Jaane Jaan (2023)

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4 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Jaane Jaan / Suspect X on Netflix

In Jaane Jaan (also known as “Suspect X“) — filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh’s adaptation of the novel The Devotion of Suspect X — Ghosh showcases the same gifts for establishing atmosphere and directing actors as he displayed in 2012’s brilliant thriller Kahaani.

Much of what made Kahaani so engrossing were the subtle interactions between characters, like the tender way Officer Rana looks at pregnant Vidya, the woman he’s helping search for her missing husband. He’s smitten with her, even though he (and we) know they can never be together. Jaane Jaan is full of poignant glances and meaningful expressions that command the audience’s attention even more powerfully than a flashy action sequence.

Kareena Kapoor Khan plays Maya, a single mother living in the West Bengal hill town Kalimpong with her 14-year-old daughter Tara (Naisha Khanna). One day, the nightmare Maya has feared for almost fifteen years comes true: her husband Ajit (Saurabh Sachdev) — a sleazy Mumbai cop who dabbles in human trafficking — finally tracks her and Tara down. Though Maya assumes that Ajit is there for her, his intentions are more sinister.

Maya’s next door neighbor Naren (Jaideep Ahlawat) — a respected but aloof mathematics teacher — is reticence personified, but he’s a keen observer. He puts some clues together (thanks in no small part to their apartment building’s paper-thin walls) and determines that Maya is in trouble. He knocks on her door at a crucial moment, offering mother and daughter an unexpected but desperately needed lifeline.

Days after Ajit’s arrival, another stranger comes to Kalimpong: dashing Mumbai police officer Karan Anand (Vijay Varma). He hopes to find Ajit and use him to bring down the human trafficking racket he’s a part of. Soon enough, Karan figures out Maya’s connection to Ajit. And he’s surprised to meet his old college buddy and fellow martial artist, Naren.

By the time Karan arrives, Ajit is nowhere to be found. The three characters engage in a delicate dance, careful not to disclose more information than they should while trying to figure out what each other knows. It’s a dangerous situation because Naren knows how smart Karan is, and it won’t be long before he assumes Maya is involved with Ajit’s disappearance. Complicating things further is that both men are attracted to Maya.

All three of the main actors give some of the best performances of their careers in Jaane Jaan. Varma moves Karan through the world with the easy confidence of a man with looks, brains, charm, and authority. He instantly befriends his new partner on the local police force, Sundar Singh (Karma Takapa). Even when Karan is focused, he’s physically relaxed.

Karan is the opposite of Naren, who Ahlwat plays with imposing rigidity and minimal expressions. Ahlawat’s job is to convey the complexity of Naren’s feelings through microscopic movements of facial muscles and barely perceptible changes in appearance. It’s a daunting challenge, but Ahlawat pulls it off beautifully. Naren is a fully realized character of great emotional depth, even though those around him can hardly tell. He’s misjudged, but he also engages in some problematic behavior, so he’s more complicated than just a sympathetic underdog.

Kapoor Khan is excellent in guiding Maya through the storm that upends her life when Ajit and Karan come to town. Whether Maya is afraid, resolute, standoffish, or vulnerable, Kapoor Khan executes everything that’s asked of her with precision.

The masterful acting isn’t limited to the main three characters and their battle of wits. Sachdev’s Ajit is a total slimeball. Khanna is wonderful as a young teen forced to shoulder unfair burdens. Characters like Officer Singh and Maya’s well-intentioned but nosy co-worker Prema (Lin Laishram) are delightfully performed and give Jaane Jaan a real sense of place.

Kalimpong is the perfect location for a mystery, full of twisting roads, hidden alleys, and towering hills. Low-hanging clouds obscure and conceal, yet its beautiful vistas and lush forest invite exploration. With Jaane Jaan, Sujoy Ghosh shows again that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

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Movie Review: Kahaani 2 (2016)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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It’s unrealistic to expect Kahaani 2 to replicate the success of a movie as special as Kahaani, but the sequel lacks many of the elements that made the original so memorable.

Writer-director Sujoy Ghosh again taps Vidya Balan to play a character named Vidya searching for a lost loved one in West Bengal. Kahaani 2‘s Vidya — Sinha this time, not Bagchi — is mother to a 14-year-old girl, Minnie (Tunisha Sharma), who is paralyzed from the waist down. The pair lives in the town of Chandan Nagar, about an hour away from Kolkata. Vidya returns from work to find her daughter missing, the girl’s phone and wheelchair left behind.

While the original Kahaani‘s Vidya spent the film tracking her missing husband with the help of a smitten police officer, the sequel’s Vidya is sidelined early on. It falls on a different cop, Inder (Arjun Rampal), to discover what’s going on when he stumbles upon an accident scene and recognizes the injured woman. However, he knows the victim by the name of Durga Rani Singh, not Vidya Sinha.

Inder’s only clue is Vidya/Durga’s diary, which chronicles events from eight years ago, when Minnie was six years old (played by cute Naisha Khanna) and the duo lived north in Kalimpong. Most of Balan’s scenes in the film are from these flashbacks. It’s frustrating that her character is inactive for much of the present-day storyline.

Inder takes the lead on the case as he adjusts to a new environment. A “gut feeling” gone wrong got him demoted from Kolkata to normally uneventful Chandan Nagar. Precisely how he earned his demotion isn’t explained, but all signs point to Inder being a decent guy. He’s got a sweet daughter and a wife, Rashmi (Manini Chadha), with whom he shares a playful antagonism. Even though Rashmi knows her husband is keeping something from her, she resists the urge to snoop in Vidya’s diary, waiting until Inder is ready to tell her the truth.

While Inder is a fine character, his problems aren’t are dire as Vidya’s, thus Ghosh’s choice to present the two character arcs in parallel doesn’t work. Vidya and Minnie find themselves in a life-or-death struggle, only for the action to cut to Inder fretting about whether his work on the case will earn him a promotion back to Kolkata. The stakes are so unequal that juxtaposing them makes Inder look more frivolous than he really is.

Balan is compelling in everything that she does, and Kahaani 2 is no different. It falls on her to deliver Ghosh’s message about the enduring trauma of sexual abuse, and she does so powerfully. Both girls who play Minnie do a lovely job and show tremendous promise. Also noteworthy is a sweet turn by Tota Roychoudhury as Arun, Vidya’s mild-mannered suitor in Kalimpong.

There are some beautifully vivid shots of Chandan Nagar at night, but the town doesn’t have a strongly defined identity the way that Kolkata did in the original Kahaani. That’s most obvious difference between the films, and — more than anything else — it is what marks Kahaani 2 as the inferior of the two movies.

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