Follow me:  Tara (left) and Ved take it to the lake in a song to take a '€œface dip'€.

Ex-real life lovers Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone reunite temporarily in the movie Tamasha (Acting). In the film, Imtiaz Ali, the director, brings to life a different kind of character named Ved Vardhan Sahani. Besides Tamasha, Ali also directed the movies Highway, Cocktail and Rockstar.

Ali introduces his character as the film begins. Ved (Kapoor) has loved to listen to stories since he was young. He would use his pocket money to pay a storyteller (Piyush Mishra) to narrate a story. The storyteller always pointed out to him that all the stories were similar. Observing the storyteller, Ved wanted to be one when he grew up but his father insisted that he take up engineering. He followed his father'€™s wishes unwillingly and went to university to study engineering. After college, he takes a job as a product manager.

He decides to take a break and goes to Corsica, France. He meets a girl named Tara Maheshwari (Padukone) whose handbag has been stolen. Ved lends her his cell phone so she can contact her father. Feeling good, Ved gets into a pretentious mood, pretending to be a Don, and introduces himself formally to Tara who just plays along and pretends to be from Interpol. They both agree to live in a temporary imaginary world. They start moving about together devoid of intimacy except for the last day when it is time for Tara to go back. She finally shows her love to the bubbly, zesty man of her life and leaves him.

There is no contact between them until four years later when Tara decides to look for him and finds him in Social 22 club. Ved, there with colleagues, instantly recognizes her. They start dating again but Ved turns out to be a different person from who he was in Corsica. The new Ved is serious, hardly smiles and has a routine life. Tara is so disappointed that when Ved proposes to her, she turns him down. Ved goes berserk. He becomes obnoxious. Tara tries to patch things up with him and apologizes but he rejects her and moves back in with his father. He then tries to fix everything that is not right in his life.

Director Ali brings his audience into a maze to get to know his characters. He starts the movie with 9-year-old Ved to introduce his character. It is pleasant in the beginning but as he sporadically returns to Ved'€™s younger days, it becomes redundant because the audience is only told of his love for storytelling. It doesn'€™t show his relationship with his family but rather with the storyteller. Ali just keeps on showing Ved going to the storyteller all the time and paying him to narrate different stories.

Thanks to Kapoor and Padukone'€™s performances, the film is worth watching. Kapoor'€™s transformative shift of character from a lively man into a boring personality is imaginative. His outbursts make the audience question his character. He manages to make the audience feel he is a lunatic when in reality he isn'€™t. He manages to make the audience want to get to know his character more.

Padukone, on the other hand, enhances the character of Ved. Her acting is superb. She brings to life Tara'€™s nature and personality. Despite her psychological problems and considering Kapoor is her ex-boyfriend, there were hardly any inhibitions for Padukone to bring out her best as his lover. The electric chemistry between the two is the best tamasha.

Ali may have his flaws in the film but he manages to capture the audience with the Corsica scene where Ved and Tara meet for the first time. The scenery is captivating with green beaches surrounded by mountains and ruins.

Ali did the right thing by using the island for a good part of the movie. Meanwhile, he only included a handful of songs but he used them to enhance the scenes. The music was composed by the two-time winner of Academy and Grammy awards, AR Rachman.

The director had the right ingredients for Tamasha, the best artists, the well-versed composer and the captivating location. Tamasha is a must-watch movie.

'€” Photo courtesy of UTV Motion Pictures

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