A still from the film
| Photo Credit: Dharma Productions
At a time when mainstream romance usually oscillates between airbrushed fantasy and comedy, with a dash of toxic masculinity, Vivek Soni’s Chand Mera Dil arrives as a grounded, mature counter-narrative. It subverts the grammar of a Bollywood musical melodrama, or what we call the Dharma production tropes, to deliver a sharp dissection of modern intimacy with a melancholic flourish.After a long time, a love story doesn’t dump career and bread and butter issues. Aarav (Lakshya) and Chandni (Ananya Panday) are not flaky cardboards. Besides the raging hormones, they come across as believable engineering students facing rigorous academic pressures. They do not drop out when life gets messy. The writing (Vivek, Tushar Paranjpe, and Akshat Ghildiyal) respects their intellect and ambition, showing that pursuing career ambitions isn’t an alternative to a love story, or vice versa. It is a heavy framework within which the love story must exist, and Ananya Panday and Lakshya strike a delicate equilibrium to anchor the film’s transition from a lyrical college romance into a stark, mature reality. They establish an effortless physical and emotional intimacy early on, making the eventual fracture sting all the more.Chand Mera Dil (Hindi)Director: Vivek SoniDuration: 135 minutesCast: Ananya Panday, Lakshya, Paresh Pahuja, Manish Chaudhuri, Pratham Rathod, Irawati HarsheSynopsis: A passionate college romance between engineering students Aarav and Chandni turns messy when an unplanned pregnancy forces them into early marriage and adulthood.There is hardly any external conflict. There are no mother or memory issues or class barriers threatening their union. Instead, the narrative hinges on a sudden crisis within their own ecosystem. An unplanned pregnancy compounded by pressures of career and making ends meet builds into frustration and a violent outburst by Aarav, which pulls them apart.
