And
quietly
slips
the
night
into
a
tortured
morning.
While
watching
the
muffled
muted
voices
looking
for
a
way
to
express
themselves
in
the
well-ordered
sparkling-clean
environment
of
an
upper
middle
class
household
in
Delhi
in
For
Real,
we
often
feel
a
sense
of
smothered
compulsion
waiting
to
be
liberated.
And
how
liberating
is
the
freedom
that
Priya
Singh
Shukla
(played
with
brutal
honesty
by
Sarita
Choudhury)
seeks
out?
She
has
given
up
what
she
thinks
was
a
promising
career
in
singing
for
her
husband
and
children.
(Hrishikesh
Mukherjee's
Anuradha
meets
Manisha
Koirala
in
Mansoor
Khan's
Akele
Hum
Akle
Tum).
And
now
confused
beyond
self-realization
by
contemporary
definitions
of
a
successful
life
Priya
may
yet
again
abandon
her
family
to
pursue
her
dreams.
We
are
not
allowed
to
be
judgemental
about
the
u-turns
that
Priya
takes
in
the
journey
of
life.
Debutant
director
Sona
Jain
has
composed
a
slight
but
sharp
symphony
on
domestic
harmony.
We
see
the
splintered
marriage
almost
entirely
through
the
eyes
of
the
traumatized
little
girl
Shruti
(Zoya
Hassan,
heartbreaking
in
her
solemnity
and
sensitivity)
who
thinks
her
mother
has
been
replaced
by
an
alien.
In
flashes
of
the
past
projected
into
the
tranquil
narrative
with
tender
care,
we
see
Shruti
witnessing
with
fright
her
parents'
fight
and
then
the
mother
flight
and
eventual
return.
The
mother
Priya's
journey
is
never
romanticized.
Her
daughter's
perceptions
on
the
mother's
seeming
betrayal
never
become
a
yardstick
by
which
we
measure
maternal
morality.
This,
I
think,
is
this
little
gem's
biggest
triumph.
The
narrative
brings
us
nowhere
close
to
judging
the
ambitious
family-deserting
wife-mom.
Close-ups,
there
are
plenty.
But
they
don't
evaluate
the
protagonist's
conscience,
only
her
emotions.
Sarita
Choudhury
breathes
lingering
life
and
an
ember-lit
fire
into
Priya's
character.
Intuitively
she
grasps
her
character's
dreams
and
aspirations
and
watches
them
clash
with
her
more
traditional
roles
within
the
household.
This
is
not
a
very
likeable
woman
to
portray.
Choudhury
brings
a
gut-wrenching
transparency
to
the
mother's
characters.
We
see
her
with
all
her
defences
down
and
yet
miraculously
not
as
vulnerable.
The
sequences
where
tries
to
strike
a
rapport
with
her
sullen
suspicious
daughter
are
so
incandescent,
you
wish
there
was
more
of
it.
In
contrast
Adil
Hussain
as
the
empathetic
husband
seems
sterile
in
his
spousal
space.
It
isn't
clear
whether
his
role
is
written
to
freeze
the
character
in
his
tracks,
or
the
actor
got
stuck
in
finding
his
way
out
of
the
character.
The
incidental
characters
come
across
as
self-conscious,
largely
because
a
bhaji
wala
or
a
maidservant
is
not
expected
to
speak
in
English.
When
they
do
we
smirk,
just
like
Priya's
son's
smirking
response
to
his
mother's
chee-chee
Hindi
at
a
restaurant.
The
high
points
of
tension
in
this
domestic
drama
are
kept
at
low
ebb
and
restricted
to
the
Mother's
interaction
with
her
daughter
and
husband.
There's
a
psychiatrist-friend
(Sameer
Dharmadhikari)
who
seems
to
be
hovering
in
the
plot
merely
to
give
it
a
dramatic
flip.
What
we
see
are
people
who
appear
normal
on
the
surface,
and
are
normal
beneath
too.
It's
only
the
pressures
of
contemporary
living
that
thwarts
their
routine
existence.
For
Real
is
an
elegantly
crafted
piece
of
cinema
with
its
heart
in
the
right
place,
though
thankfully
no
song
and
dance
is
made
of
the
emotions
that
flow
out
of
hearts
which
bleed
in
bridled
anxiety.
The
domestic
scenes
are
sensibly
edited
(Amitabh
Shukla,
Julie
Kerr).
Deborah
Molison's
music
and
Zakir
Husain's
songs
are
blessedly
unobtrusive.
Nothing
in
For
Real
breaks
the
rhythm
of
normalcy
except
the
sound
of
a
breaking
marriage.
Tragically
that
too
has
become
normal
in
our
times.
No
dramatic
dips
and
curves
here.
What
we
take
away
from
this
film
is
a
sensible
minimal
take
on
a
marriage
that
has
seen
better
days,
and
a
searing
performance
by
Sarita
Choudhury
that
hopefully
will
see
favourable
days
ahead
at
a
time
when
buffoonery
is
mistaken
for
engaging
acting
in
Indian
cinema.
Story first published: Monday, September 20, 2010, 16:47 [IST]