Poet in love: Shashi (Anushka Sharma) dances in sheer happiness because she is in love with Roop (Diljit Dosanjh).

What happens when you get married to a ghost?

Comedy ghost movies with social messages are a handful in the Indian film industry.

Amitabh Bachchan’s two ghost movies Bhoothnath and Bhoothnath Returns discussed social messages with the latter becoming a big hit worldwide. In Phillauri, actress Anushka Sharma tried her hand in producing and acting in a movie about a ghost bride.

The film starts with Kanan (Suraj Sharma) who returns from Canada after three years to marry his childhood sweetheart, Anu (Mehrene Pirzada). His excited family picks him up from the airport and heads straight to his fiancé’s house.

His parents decide to show his horoscope to a senior Hindu priest who informs them that he is a manglik (presence of unpleasant Mars in the horoscope). The priest orders Kanan to get married to a tree first. If not, bad luck will befall him.

Unwillingly, Kanan agrees to get married to a tree. The wedding ceremony with the tree follows and Kanan’s father has the tree cut after the ceremony is over.

Afterwards, the family celebrates Kanan and Anu’s engagement ceremony. Kanan is actually not keen on the idea of marriage. He loves Anu but he is not ready for marriage.

While his relatives enjoy the dancing during the party, Kanan moves away from it and goes up to the terrace. He is smoking his weed when Anu shows up and tries to confront him about his lackluster attitude.

Kanan later goes to his room to sleep and is awakened by his bed, taken for a ride upwards. A lady ghost, Shashi (Anushka Sharma), appears to his face and he screams, catching the attention of his family. He tries to tell his family about the ghost, but nobody believes him. Anu even scolds him, saying that his hallucination was the result of smoking weed.

The next day, ghost Shashi appears again and Kanan, despite his fear, tries to respond to the conversation with the spirit. It turns out that Shashi is a ghost who lived in the tree, but she cannot return to the tree anymore since it has been cut down.

Ghost Shashi starts to tell her life story. A hundred years ago, she was a spinster who lived with her brother, a well-respected medical doctor. She would help her brother write labels on medicine bottles. At the same time, she would write poems for the newspaper under a pen name without the knowledge of her strict brother.

Shashi was not allowed to go out of the house after sunset. However, when her brother was called for an emergency visit to another village, she used a bamboo stair to go out of her house, which was padlocked by her brother. Unknowingly, a singer named Roop Lal (Diljit Dosanjh) fell in love with her at first sight.

The next day, Roop bumped into her in the market and tried to woo her. He told her that he was Phillauri, the poet who wrote the poems in the papers. Shashi slapped him and told him to use his talents in a more meaningful way. Roop tried to improve himself and started leading a more religious life.

Shashi closely watched his transformation. At times, she would drop a paper with a poem at his garage door so he could use them as lyrics for his song. They fell in love and slept together. One day her brother found out about their relationship and immediately tried to separate them.

A few days later, Roop came to Shashi’s house only to be slapped by the brother.

Undeterred, Roop tried to convince him that Shashi had written beautiful poems and that he would be back for her on Baisakhi day to marry her. In the meantime, he was going to Amritsar to record his music with Shashi’s poems.

Shashi’s brother eventually realized that Roop was a good man and he promised his sister that he would prepare a posh wedding celebration for them. However, Roop never showed up on the promised day. Shashi later committed suicide, killing herself and her unborn baby.

Back to the present, ghost Shashi observes that Kanan and Anu are growing distant.

She tries to help the couple unite and at the same they help her analyze her unfinished business on earth.

The editing of the movie Phillauri is very good, but the script needs a lot of improvement. Kanan’s hallucination at the beginning of the film, for example, had no connection with the film. Ghost Shashi could have come out of the tree after the wedding ceremony rather than appear in Kanan’s room.

Suraj Sharma’s and Mehrene Pirzada’s debut in the film needed more guidance in terms of acting. Anushka Sharma’s presence is a major savior for the film. Her acting as usual was in tune with her character.

The color scheme of the wardrobe is also well coordinated. Anushka’s wardrobe was simple but the kind of colors used brought vibrancy to a mediocre location.

Although Phillauri offers an unrealistic storyline, it is worth watching.

— Photos courtesy of Fox Star Studios

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Phillauri

(Fox Star Studios, 134 minutes)

Directed by Anshai Lai

Starring: Anushka Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh, Suraj Sharma, Mehrene Pirzada

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