Tamasha

A film that begins in Corsica and continues in India. Ved and Tara meet on holiday. They set a rule: they will not tell each other their real names, will not speak of their pasts and will not meet again once the holiday ends. For a week they play people of their own invention. In that game Ved is lively, funny and endlessly telling stories. They part. Years later they meet in Delhi. Tara finds someone else in front of her. Ved now works for a company, speaks in measured tones and laughs at nothing. Tara tells him this is not the person she was looking for. From there the film goes back to Ved's childhood. There was a boy who paid a storyteller to hear tales; his father told him to study engineering and he did. The matter at the centre is not the relationship between two people but how someone tells their own story and whether that story can be changed. The narrative does not run straight; the staging is built like a theatre performance and the songs are part of that structure. Ranbir Kapoor plays Ved and Deepika Padukone plays Tara. Imtiaz Ali directed. The music is by A. R. Rahman. It did not draw the expected audience on release; its standing rose in later years. A strong choice for anyone who likes narratives that step outside the usual in Indian cinema. For a viewer expecting a classic romance, the film puts the relationship in second place.