If this is what you do to cross-border relations, stay away. Lahore Confidential is more a joke on diplomatic relations than a film to be taken seriously. A farcical version of Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi with Richa Chadha doing an abysmally poor impersonation of a woman trapped into sleeping with the enemy.
I loved Arunoday Singh’s character of the poetic Pakistani socialite, with something dark under his smiling front, whom Richa’s character Ananya falls in love. And the only reason I love him is that he’s named after one of my earliest editors Rauf Ahmed. It’s the only redeeming factor for me in this joke of a film. Rauf Ahmed Kazmi is shifty romantic sinister and charming, just the kind of mysterious rake that a stupid woman like Ananya would fall for.
Their first kiss occurs midway through the film after 30 mins. That’s right. The film is only an hour and 8 minutes long. That is the second redeeming factor. However don’t get your spirits high because the film promises a sequel, and I really won’t hold my breath to see how much of the intended humour of this film spills into that next one.
Lahore Confidential is not just bad filmmaking, it insults international diplomatic relations. It shows a RAW agent, played indifferently by Ms Chadha as a gullible, hopeless romantic with her head buried in the poems of Faiz(since she’s supposed to fond of poetry, poetry books are strategically placed behind her, thankfully she isn’t fond of porn).
Her colleague at the Indian embassy in Lahore played by Karishma Tanna is a bad a girl. She uses the ‘f’ word, performs the ‘f’ act and she’s part of a film that makes us want to use the ‘f’ word. And by the way, is this Lahore? No effort has gone into showing the city as authentic. This film could have been shot anywhere when in fact it shouldn’t have been shot at all.
Ananya is shown to severely compromise India’s espionage work in Pakistan. She is still given a “second chance” by her bosses. I just hope this film’s “second chance”, the promised sequel, doesn’t happen. Some transgressions are beyond forgiveness.
Directed by Kunal Kohli, Lahore Confidential gets 1 star.
Image source: Youtube/rajsarvir, IMDb