THE LUNCHBOX – Review

It’s hard to imagine anyone falling in love through handwritten notes and letters anymore – in this day and age, we trade text messages and chat on Facebook instead. It may be infinitely more practical, but it’s also a lot less romantic. The Lunchbox, a charming hit on last year’s festival circuit, will make you yearn for a simpler time, even as it hides some surprisingly sharp messages about the modern world within the gentle twists and turns of its apparently old-fashioned love story.

Every day, dutiful housewife Ila (Kaur) meticulously prepares a delicious lunchbox for her distant husband Rajeev (Nakul Vaid). But, due to a mix-up in Mumbai’s famously efficient lunchbox delivery service, her bespoke meals are delivered instead to the desk of lonely office-worker Saajan (Khan). Due to retire soon and forced to train his eternally chirpy successor Shaikh (Siddiqui), the elder gentleman finds comfort in Ila’s home-cooked food. Before long, Saajan and Ila strike up a correspondence via lunchbox: one that deepens into a friendship and, perhaps, something more.

It’s not often that Indian cinema goes for restraint and realism in its depiction of an unlikely romance. Typically, lovers express their feelings for each other in an exuberant explosion of song and dance. The Lunchbox sets itself apart in the quiet, understated way in which it forges the connection between Saajan and Ila. At first, the notes these two lonely souls trade are bemused, before they grow in depth and emotion. She confides in him her suspicions of her husband’s affair and her desire to take her young daughter away from it all. He, in turn, finds someone who gives him a reason to feel alive again. The relationship that develops between them is sweet, tentative and unexpectedly rich.

Beyond this unusual courtship, however, is a story that doesn’t shy away from addressing some of the thorny, complicated issues in modern Indian society. There’s a fierce desire to live hiding inside Ila that feels positively subversive within her station in life. She should be good, dutiful and quiet; not hopeful, angry and determined. The film also ponders the melancholy of growing old alone: Saajan’s life seems a bleak one, his forced relationship with Shaikh awkward and almost cruelly unfair. But, as Saajan thaws towards his quirky successor, it becomes possible to see the heart and hope living within this man who grew older without realising it.

Khan and Kaur are wonderful. He anchors the film with a sad soulfulness, one that makes his gradual shedding of his grouchy, curmudgeonly ways believable. His gentle joy at opening another folded letter, tucked beneath the folds of a chappati, is matched only by Kaur’s own. She’s a lovely actress, able to communicate a tossing ocean of inner life beneath a quiet, well-behaved demeanour. Siddiqui, too, is charming as plucky orphan Shaikh – it’s not often that an actor can go from hated to tolerated to quite well-liked during a film, but he makes that transition easier for an audience.

Occasionally, The Lunchbox meanders. The pace of the film never really gets above a gentle trot, and this might prove off-putting for some. But it’s hard to begrudge the film its more languid scenes, when it’s so amply made up with moments quirky (Ila’s conversations with her never-seen upstairs neighbour) and heartbreaking (Ila waiting in vain to meet Saajan at a cafe). Tender, rich and surprisingly progressive, The Lunchbox is a welcome feast for the heart and soul.

Summary: Delicious.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Shawne Wang