Mod

Indian Express rating: *1/2

The sylvan hill-station and its slow pace is just the place for Nagesh Kukunoor’s latest,about the love between a girl who fixes watches,and a young man who is frozen in time. The director has an eye for good-looking locations,but lately he’s not had much luck with his movies. On that scale,’Mod’,inspired by Taiwanese film ‘Keeping Watch’,is better than his previous disastrous ‘Tasveer’,but not by much.

Aranya (Takia) is a busy young woman. Her attention is divided between faulty timepieces,a drunken father (Yadav),a loving aunt (Azmi),an ever-hopeful suitor,and a greedy developer (Rana) who wants her patch for his resort. And then one day along comes Andy (Singh) who has a damp watch that has stopped working. She sets it right. He’s back again. This repeats itself daily till she discovers that it is ‘pyaar’,not ‘paani’ that’s making him arrive at her doorstep,first with watches,then poetry,then a bewildered where-am-I expression.

It’s so obvious that Andy is not who he says he is that you wonder why Kukunoor takes so long to get to the point. But then,he needs to pause to show off all the nice waterfalls and the rocks and the winding roads. The scenery is fine only for a bit,but then gets overtaken by situations which you can see a mile off. You know that that Andy is disturbed much before the doctor (Mahadevan) pronounces his diagnosis. The reason for his being the way he is unspools with no surprises. Takia is her familiar wholesome-girl-next-door but has to shoulder too much of the film,and Rannvijay is one-tone.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com