Gehraiyaan review: Deepika Padukone is astounding in this Shakun Batra drama that leaves you reeling

Shakun Batra’s Gehraiyaan (2022) revolves around two couples whose lives change drastically when they reconnect as adults. Alisha (Deepika Padukone), Karan (Dhairya Karwa) and Tia (Ananya Panday) grew up together. Alisha and Karan are now in a long-term relationship while Alisha and Tia, who are actually cousins, have lost touch for eight years.

They all reunite when Tia returns to Mumbai with her fiancé Zain (Siddhant Chaturvedi) and head to Alibaug to the family house as a getaway. We slowly get to know about the foursome — Alisha is a yoga instructor, hoping to develop a related app for her business, Karan is a struggling writer, and Zain is into real estate. Tia is, well, rich.

Tia and Alisha aren’t able to fall back into old childhood patterns despite the younger woman’s attempts. Alisha is struggling as well, with her business, her relationship, and her long-standing fear of being stuck in the same rut that enveloped her late mother many years ago. She maintains a cordial but distant relationship with her father (Naseeruddin Shah).

She does manage to connect with Zain — the two strangers are initially intrigued and attracted by one another and manage to strike up a flirtation and something more behind their respective partners’ backs. Soon, the lies pile up, and it’s a full-blown affair hidden from those who are closest to them. But there are demons, personal for Alisha and professional for Zain, that threaten to spill out in front of Tia, disrupting their universes.

Gehraiyaan is a deeply layered film that takes you in one direction and then completely changes course, in a good way. The film is not merely about infidelity; it is also about complex human relationships and why we sometimes cannot open up to those who are most important.

As the plot thickens, the stakes get higher. In the third act, Batra moves the characters ahead in a trajectory that is both shocking and surprising. And yet there is still more ahead. He has evolved a lot since his first film Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012) and the tracks pursued here feel a bit like a progression of Kapoor & Sons (2016) when hidden family secrets are unveiled.

The filmmaker and his co-writers Ayesha Devitre Dhillon, Sumit Roy and Yash Sahai deliver an intriguing tale of drama which is amped up by the tension of the affair being discovered at every turn, thanks to editor Nitesh Bhatia.

Padukone is astonishingly good as the vulnerable Alisha. She handles her character’s anxiety and desire to move away from her past quite capably, moving you at times. Her choice of roles lately shows how much she has grown over the years. Like Piku, Veronica and Leela, this character, too, will join the actress’s repertoire.

Chaturvedi puts in another solid turn as the brash and confident Zain who believes he can hustle his way out of anything, including two-timing his fiancée. Panday and Karwa as childhood best friends enact their parts with ease. In fact, the two couples are poles apart when we first meet them, throwing off a distinct South Bombay (SoBo) meets the suburbs vibe.

Naseeruddin Shah as Alisha's father and Rajat Kapoor as Zain's business partner, in smaller parts, turn in terrific performances that are so essential for the film and its story. Most, if not all, of these characters are damaged and act in ways that aren’t perfect or even moral. The film also shows how the past has a deep effect on the present, colouring it in different ways.

There are frequent transitions of the waves between scenes, rough and choppy, and cresting occasionally into one big tidal wave, foreshadowing the tsunami that is to come later.

The feature delves in and out of upper- and middle-class homes, setting the tone for the story and its characters. The production design by TP Abid gives a lived-in feel, even with the grand settings. Zain and Alisha have big aspirations for their future and they strive towards their goals.

The original score by OAFF and Savera has already won over fans with the soulful tracks ‘Doobey’ and ‘Gehraiyaan’ written by Kausar Munir and Ankur Tewari. They fit the film perfectly, especially framed as breezy montages filmed appealingly by director of photography Kaushal Shah.

Batra nails a lot of things in Gehraiyaan but it’s his ability to explore flawed relationships that prevails. Like the ocean, which masks its depth and darkness, Gehraiyaan, too, hides its real self and as we dive deeper and deeper, the secrets that emerge will both disrupt and inform our views of these characters.

This one is going to linger with me awhile, despite my quibbles about certain loose strands in the third act.

Gehraiyaan is now available on Amazon Prime Video.