Jane Austen is known for her use of what is sometimes called 'Free Indirect Discourse,' a literary technique in which a character speaks through the voice of the narrator. It's a melding of first and third person point of view, omniscient but intimate and fallible. And it's blooming hard to pull off in a movie, but somehow Qarib Qarib Singlle (2017) manages something similar.
Jaya Shashidharan (Parvathy Thiruvothu) is fine. Her younger brother Ashish (Siddharth Menon) is studying at Princeton, and her husband Manav passed away years ago, but she's fine. Her work at an insurance agency keeps her busy, and she's frequently babysitting and cat-sitting for various friends. She's fine. Just ask her.
And then Jaya decides that she's sick of being fine, so she creates an account on a dating website, and is immediately flooded by crude and aggressive messages, along with a very polite and erudite note form someone calling himself Yogi.
Yogi turns out to be Yogendra Kumar Devendra Nath Prajapati (Irrfan Khan), a self-proclaimed and self published poet who makes his money (apparently a lot of money) by suggesting food items to various companies. Yogi is rich enough to be called eccentric, but really he's weird, a bit full of himself, and very, very talkative, and while Jaya isn't exactly charmed, she's sufficiently entertained to agree to another date.
Yogi talks about . . . well, Yogi talks about everything that pops into his head, but he spends a fair amount of time talking about his three former girlfriends, all of whom (he says) still yearn for him. Jaya suggest that he go see them and find out if they're pining or not, and Yogi invites her to come along. Jaya surprises herself by agreeing.
The romantic road trip is a Bollywood staple; boy meets girl, boy and girl grow closer while taking a life-changing journey across India or Switzerland or . . . well, let's be honest, it's usually India or Switzerland. Of course, the road trip is usually the first part of the movie, with our heroes overcoming the various obstacles to their love in the second part. Yogi and Jaya are older, and the only real obstacle to their potential love is that they're both set in their ways and too focused on their respective pasts to move on.
But what really interests me about Qarib Qarib Singlle is the narrative voice. At first the movie is locked to Jaya's perspective, and she will occasionally talk directly to the camera to comment on the action. As she gets to know Yogi better, that loosens up, and we see more and more from his perspective as well. (Though only Jaya gets to address the camera.) The end result is a narrative that is intimate but fallible. The movie seems to change its mind as Jaya does. The story being told is not very Austen (though Yogi is proud, and Jaya is quick to judge) but the storytelling definitely is.
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