Masand's Movie Review: Luck By Chance insightful, funny

LAND OF DREAMS: The film follows Farhan Akhtar and Konkona Sensharma, both playing wannabe actors.

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The opening scene of director Zoya Akhtar's Luck By Chance sets the mood for the two-and-half hours or so that follow. In this scene Konkona Sensharma who stars as a struggling actress finds herself being indirectly and indecently propositioned by a sleazy film producer. It's a humorous scene because the casting couch is one of Bollywood's oldest clichés and because Aly Khan who plays the producer in question, performs that scene remarkably, giving her just the kind of smarmy lines you know you should never believe. But that scene is also dark and disturbing at the same time, especially when the camera stays on Konkona's uncomfortable expression in the end. You realise she wants the job so bad, she's going to accept his advances knowing fully well she's doing something wrong.

Luck By Chance is an insider look at Bollywood, and about making it in the big, bad world of showbiz. And indeed it's a bad world. A world where friends are used and abused, where lovers are replaced overnight, where mothers manipulate their daughters, and where you're only as important as your last hit. At the same time, director Zoya Akhtar's affection for the film industry is evident in her comic, often lovable take on the business and its people who she's observed so closely as an insider herself. The film then is a deeply layered portrait of an industry quite unlike any other, a sharp observation of the grime behind the glamour, the insecurities behind the smiling faces.

The film follows Farhan Akhtar and Konkona Sensharma, both playing wannabe actors, who walk the walk and talk the talk and do everything it takes to realise their dreams. Both compromise on their principles to get ahead, but while one is successful, the other is not quite, this disparity ultimately driving a wedge through their relationship.

Intuitively written by Akhtar herself, Luck By Chance is both insightful and funny. The film serves up a palette of colorful characters who may seem like caricatures on the outside but come packed with emotional depth and even a tinge of sad back-story. Chief among these is greasy old-school film producer Romi Rolly (played astoundingly by Rishi Kapoor) who, at one point we see break down when a superstar he created won't return his calls. Or the yesteryear siren-turned-pushy star-mum (played by Dimple Kapadia) who makes a shocking confession when confronted by her exasperated daughter.

Akhtar also succeeds in keeping the mood light when necessary, packing a bagful of in-jokes, several delivered by the very characters they're aimed at. It's sporting of Sanjay Kapoor to play the failed actor brother of a big producer who turns his sights to direction, or Anurag Kashyap who's cast as the writer-with-a-serious-bent bullied into plagiarizing a foreign film, or even Hrithik Roshan as the superstar heartthrob caught up in his own image.