He should have known when she insists that he stop smoking but then halts the traffic for a smooch. Chandni is good for Aarav’s physical health but harmful to his overall wellbeing. This paradoxical but also unwavering feeling emerges through the exertions and contortions that constitute Chand Mera Dil.The latest film from Vivek Soni (Meenakshi Sundareshwar, Aap Jaisa Koi) is one of those capitalised Intense Love Stories, in which the courtship is so heady that the hangover is bound to be a whopper. For Aarav (Lakshya) and Chandni (Ananya Panday), who meet at the age of 21, reality hits in the form of a brutal push towards adulting.The academically bright engineering students have been too ardour-struck to use birth control. Chandni’s insistence on keeping the baby even though neither of them has graduated is a moment of reckoning for Aarav, and for the fate of the movie.The overwritten, convoluted screenplay by Vivek Soni and Tushar Paranjape examines the couple’s struggles with a relationship that has peaked too early. Aarav tries to be manly about it, until he tips over the edge. The story follow him on his road to redemption.Chand Mera Dil positions itself as a grown-up romance, in which the main opposition comes not from external factors but from within the characters. Although there are moments of piercing honesty and emotional rawness, the film is ultimately too conservative and one-sided to be a contemporary chronicle of an ugly rupture.Ananya Panday in Chand Mera Dil (2026). Courtesy Dharma Productions.Unlike, say, Mohit Takalkar’s mature Toh Ti Ani Fuji, in which the man and the woman are on par in love as well as misery, Chand Mera Dil is more worried about Aarav while pretending to be equally concerned about Chandni’s perspective. Both do get their share of overwrought agonising.Aarav shouts out his misery into the ether. Chandni’s equipoise crumbles when nobody is looking.She weeps over Aarav’s pain, but can’t stop damaging him. Scene after scene, while claiming to put forth Chandni’s point of view, only reinforces the price that Aarav is paying for Chandni’s decisions.Despite being filmed in unflattering and wonky close-ups, Ananya Panday and Lakshya are sincerity personified. The leads are required to stay focused and invested in a film that is mostly a two-hander between deracinated individuals.Lakshya, the action hero from Kill (2023), is in a different kind of fighting mode in Chand Mera Dil. Lakshya benefits tremendously from the script’s partiality towards his character, and always has the more emotionally truthful moments. Panday’s arc is too messy to make Chandni worthy of empathy, let alone respect.Manish Chaudhari, Irawati Harshe Mayadev, Charu Shankar and Vidushi Kaul have a few disposable scenes as various family members. Paresh Pahuja is the unfortunately named Kevin, Chandni’s suitor at work. The baby who plays the daughter of Chandni and Aarav is as distressed as her parents, visibly uncomfortable around the actors and bawling most of the time.