Four funerals, no wedding.

 Dil Bechara (2020) is the official Bollywood adaptation of the Hollywood movie The Fault in Our Stars, based on the novel by bestselling author, philanthropist, internet educator, and original Nerdfighter John Green, and like a lot of Green's work it is by turns absurd, heartfelt, angry, and grappling with mortality.

"Absurd, heartfelt, angry, and grappling with mortality" is also a good description of Kizie Basu (Sanjana Sanghi), a young college student with thyroid cancer.  Kizie lives a constrained life, watched over by her overprotective mother Sunila (Swastika Mukherjee) and laid back father Abhiraj (Saswata Chatterjee, playing a good guy for obce), along with her constant companion, the oxygen tank she calls Pushpinder.  Kizie wants a normal life, but she's tied to a neverending routine of medication and hospital visits.  She wants answers, but she knows she's not going to get them, so instead she crashes random funerals, hoping to form a connection with the bereaved so she can avoid thinking of the people she'll leave behind.

And then Kizie meets Manny, properly Immanuel Rajkumar Junior (Suishant Singh Rajput), filming an amateur movie on the street with his friend JP (Sahil Vaid.)  Manny is cocky and almost deliberately annoying, and Kizie takes an instant dislike to him, but they just keep meeting.  He turns out to be a student at her college, returning after a long absence, and he takes over the school talent show in order to perform the title song.  he and JP also show up at Kizie's cancer support group, and for good reason: JP has already lost one eye to cancer and is going to lose the other one soon, while Manny lost a leg to osteosarcoma and is now in remission.  

Cancer is not the only thing that connects them, though.  Manny is an enormous fan of Superstar Rajnikanth, and the movie he and JP are making is a Rajnikanth pastiche.  Kizie isn't really into movies, but she loves music, especially the work of the reclusive songwriter Abhimanyu Veer.  Manny wants Kizie to play the female lead in the movie, while Kizie wants to share the music she loves.  They make a deal.

It's the music that they really bond over, especially Abhimanyu's final song, which was unfinished and ends abruptly.  Kizie in particular becomes fixated on meeting Abhimanyu and asking him why the song was never finished, so that at least she'll have an answer about something.  But Abhimanyu has vanished completely.  Meanwhile, she and Manny drift into a sweet and awkward romance, and adopt the Tamil word "Seri," meaning "Okay," as their private way of telling each other "Don't forget to be awesome."

And then things happen.  Manny discovers that Abhimanyu is living in Paris, and even manages to email him, but the composer won't answer any questions unless they ask in person.  They plan to go to Paris, and then Kizie's health suddenly declines.  After some drama, they go to Paris anyway, and meet Abhimanyu (Saif Ali Khan), who turns out to be a nasty, nihilistic jerk who doesn't mind taunting a young cancer patient about the inevitability of death to  her face.  Kizie and Manny are left to find their own meaning in the world, but there is more bad news to come, because this is a story that was only ever going to end one way.

Sushant Singh Rajput died on June 14, 2020, and Dil Bechara was released on the streaming service Disney+ Hotstar on July 24, just over a month later.  The movie never made it to theaters because of COVID restrictions.  Rajput's death has kind of overshadowed the film; it's better known as his last movie than for its own merits.  And if it was a different movie it would be more of a problem, but this is a movie about death and legacy and what we leave behind, a movie that asks questions even though it knows there won't be any answers.  It's absurd and heartfelt and angry, and it grapples with mortality because we all grapple with mortality.

So I'm not going to worry about whether this is a good movie or not; I enjoyed it, and I am happy to leave it at that.  However, Dil Bechara also features a good example of the double standard you often see in Bollywood casting.  Sushant Singh Rajput and Swastika Mukherjee had worked together before, in 2015's Detective Byomkesh Bakshi.  Rajput played the titular detective, while Mukherjee played the sultry femme fatale Anguri Devi.  The actors are close to the same age, but men can keep playing the young hero for decades while women are quickly shunted into roles as mothers and then grandmothers.