That Femme Again:
The 2021 film, Hasseen Dillruba, directed by Vinil Mathew, was based on the germ of an idea from Roald Dahl’s twisted thriller, Lamb To The Slaughter. It ended with the murder of Rani’s (Taapsee Pannu) lover Neel (Harshwardhan Rane), her husband Rishu (Vikrant Massey) cutting his hand off to make it look like the body in a burning house is his, and the couple run off to Agra to start a new life.
They get away with the crime, but cannot live together, for fear of the cops catching up. In the sequel, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, directed by Jayprad Desai, there is a temporary lull before the storm. She she runs a beauty parlour, he works as a coaching class teacher, both putting aside money to escape the country. Then, a cop (Aditya Srivastav) from their past turns up carrying his suspicions with him, but much worse, Neel’s uncle Mrityunjay aka Montu Chacha (Jimmy Shergill) arrives with the promise of exposing the two and their crime. He is proud of his “woodpecker” reputation–like the bird that pecks away at a tree trunk till there is a hole in it.
In the first film, the plot unfolded in a convincing way; the sequel (also written by Kanika Dhillon) is too convoluted. Which is not to say it is not entertaining. Rani, stylish for middle class Agra, dressed in strappy, backless blouses and sexily draped saris, becomes the object of devotion of a door-to-door compounder, Abhimanyu (Sunny Kaushal). Rishu has his own stalker-ish admirer, Poonam (Bhumika Dube), but she admits she wants a temporary alliance, while Abhimanyu is the old-style aashiq, who existed only in old movie romances, and trashy paperbacks.
The pulp novelist Dinesh Pandit, whose plots and lines give his fan Rani ideas for her own perilous life, comes to the rescue again through the outlandishly fiendish stories. With Montu Chacha dogging her every step, Rani and Rishu have to communicate through Pandit’s couplets scribbled on walls. It is “Panditji’s” book that gives Rani the thought of marrying Abhimanyu, to deflect the cops’ scrutiny.
The husband of convenience accepts his role, and the two spend their time drinking and playing snakes-and-ladders. But in any effective thriller the plot eventually thickens, and slithers all over the sleepy town, like the crocodiles that have taken over the river in Agra. These reptiles play an important part in the escape plan of Rani and Rishab, with Abhimanyu being a sporting accomplice. But, of course, there are deceptions and several twists in the tale, which may be implausible, but also give the viewer the thrills unapologetically offered by corny novels, the bombastic lines or loony logic of which are never questioned by fans.
Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba is that kind of believe-it-or-not film, that wraps up one passionate love story, but leaves room for a third part!
The performances are uniformly excellent, but Sunny Kaushal and Jimmy Shergill wade right into the spirit of it, and enjoy themselves. “Gajab” as Montu Chacha is fond of saying.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
