With age, I’ve gotten cynical about the romantic comedy genre. (I’ve also gotten cynical in general, but that’s a story for another cloudy and misanthropic day). You can’t blame me. As a Nineties’ kid, this is the genre that invited me into the movies. Billy Crystal, Richard Gere, Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Marisa Tomei – these names were my access to not just future cinephilia but also a childhood full of hope and happily ever afters. Even today, I randomly tear up in the middle of an afternoon when I think of them. Those films taught me to remember the best parts of ourselves. Then came the cross-cultural romcoms – the cutesy movies about brown-white (or white-brown) romances in the West – which started the decay in the mid-2000s. The formulas set in. The exoticised lens fed the pre-streaming zeitgeist. Soon, Hollywood stars moved to heavyweight pastures, and now all we’re left with are the algorithmic ruins of the Christmas Movie (here’s looking at you, Netflix).
So believe me when I say that I had no plans to watch What’s Love Got To Do With It. The unnecessary Tina Turner stan-title and above reasons aside, I’m at a film festival that’s north of the Arctic circle, and time (along with stamina and Vitamin D) is of utmost value. Every minute counts. Secondly, it’s not normal to slip into a rom-com during a film festival. While it’s nice to puncture the gravitas of the intense competition titles, even as a welcome change of rhythm, a cross-cultural rom-com – especially for a South Asian film critic – is bottom of the food chain. It’s not 2003.
However, the one thing that piqued my curiosity was the director’s name: Shekhar Kapur. Once famous for making era-defining Hindi movies (Masoom, 1983; Mr India, 1987; Bandit Queen, 1994), Kapur is now famous for not making movies. It’s been a while. This is his first feature since the Oscar-nominated Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), back when he was still Indian cinema’s most popular Western export. Since then projects have been announced and shelved, and Boomer Twitter has been discovered. So what makes an acclaimed director makes his comeback with a rom-com? Is this another case of a veteran filmmaker trying to speak outdated millennial language in a doomed pursuit to adapt? Has Kapur ever made a feel-good film?