This languidly paced first feature by Anurag Kawatra fails to incite any emotion.
Kuch Der Aur review: Uninteresting drama situated in picturesque Chandni Chowk
Cinestaan Rating
Release Date: 30 Sep 2018 / 56min
Sonal Pandya | Mumbai, 06 Oct 2018 19:00 IST
As the title suggests, there’s a lot of waiting in Kuch Der Aur. Set in Delhi, the student film by Amity University graduate Anurag Kawatra follows a sad young man named Nishant (Saajan Kataria), called Bittu by everyone. He lives with his mute mother (Meenu Kawatra) and shares a household with a Muslim couple, Chacha and Chachi, who run the halwai shop once founded by Bittu’s father.
Bittu doesn’t really know what he wants out of life, he certainly doesn’t want to work at the shop, making jalebis, but he loves living in Chandni Chowk. He loves exploring and traversing up and down its labyrinth-like lanes. A loner at heart, his closest friends are his mother, to whom he pours out his heart daily, and a stray dog, Sheroo, whom he meets daily.
Chacha constantly frets what will happen to the irresponsible Bittu who never comes to work on time and seems lost in his own world.
One day, a young woman Kaira (Niharika Kundu) stops by the shop with her friends. She leaves behind her wallet by mistake and Bittu runs off to give it back to her. Kaira remembers Bittu the next time she’s back in Chandni Chowk. The young woman from London is studying in Delhi and doing a research project on the busy market in Old Delhi.
The two spend more and more time together as Bittu shows Kaira around Chandni Chowk. They are comfortable in each other silences and grow close. But is it a romantic relationship? Bittu might be inclined to think so.
Kawatra’s film, though only over an hour long, moves at a languid pace and is hampered by the stiff amateurish acting of its players. The scenes with Bittu and his friends seem painfully out of a school production. One couldn’t empathise with Saajan Kataria’s Bittu and his staccato narration, though the scenes with him and Kaira are the strength of the film.
The student filmmaker has a good eye for the surroundings, as Chandni Chowk and Delhi are shown in all its old-world splendour. But at times, it felt like he dithered between the setting and characters, unsure whether to give one more prominence over the other.
Kuch Der Aur set up a story of a young man struggling with his emotions and ambitions, but isn’t able to deliver on the promise of what it is trying to deliver. The metaphor of Chandni Chowk as a station where people come and go and leave others behind seems to be lost somehow.
Kuch Der Aur was screened at the 9th Jagran Film Festival on 30 September 2018 in Mumbai.