Stop me when it begins to get implausible. An uncouth gangster on the run after a shootout (Rahul Bose, don't interrupt yet) and a neglected housewife splurging to reclaim her life (Shifaali Shah) on their birthday — a happy co-incidence, 29th February — which this seemingly futuristic film tells us last came in 2008, strike a random conversation at a cafe during which she not just assumes he's a detective but also pleads to spend a day with him on the case he's working on and soon, the duo check into a hotel room to follow their target and have a moment or two of sexual tension, what with her slinky low neck dress and him in a bath robe and they don't even... Ok, you get the picture.
Shifaali Shah is endearing as the housewife hoping her husband hasn't forgotten her birthday, but just as we are beginning to empathise with her, the film shows us its grander ambitions of being a chick flick meets gangster film meets Mr. & Mrs. Iyer territory of an almost romance.
It's a convoluted concoction with makeovers, shopping sprees, shootouts and a cockamamie chase that steers off the road and checks them into a hotel room. And a set-up for a road film full of adventures fizzles out to become an indoor drama as they are thrown together by the universe in a crowded lift (they are the only two in the lift facing each other at kissing distance yet not looking away) and later in the narrow passageway of the bathroom. Okay, so do they at least do it and make this an adult drama about the question of fidelity?
Kucch Luv Jaisaa sits safely on the wall with a half-hearted desire to break away from the shackles of convention taking it only as far as Indian films have traditionally permitted screen wives to stray. If it was about love and not sex as the film suggests, it seems unlikely that two people who are still in love with their partners would think of anything else.
Occasionally making points about the neglect housewives face, Barnali Ray Shukla's film has very little else to offer but the talented Shifaali Shah in a full-fledged glamorous role. Rahul Bose works with his limitations and is more effective when he does not have to speak but it will always be a stretch for us to see the face of the Indian English film pretend like he does not understand English.
Kucch Luv Jaisaa
Genre: Romance
Director: Barnali Ray Shukla
Cast: Rahul Bose, Shifaali Shah, Sumeet Raghavan, Neetu Chandra
Storyline: Two strangers, a bored housewife and a wanted gangster, spend a day together after facing neglect and betrayal, respectively.
Bottomline: Yawn-inducing yarn
