Imagine being engrossed in a big-screen movie when an advertising suddenly appears. It’s a full-length advertisement for a well-known sweet rather than a subtle product placement of an occasional beer bottle or auto brand. Even in the difficult moments, a character mouths the slogan, “praan jaaye par Pulse na jaaye.” The movie Ulajh is like that blatant advertisement for a product, trying to sell you on Janhvi Kapoor as an actor. Even though it’s literally their ‘praan’ on the line at this point in the movie, the marketing department may not have thought it was a clever wedge-in.
The protagonist of the tale is Janhvi’s youthful, intelligent, multilingual character Suhana Bhatia, who hails from a powerful family of diplomats and has a grandpa “whose name is written in school textbooks.” The sword of nepotism hangs heavy over her head as the youngest Deputy High Commissioner of India. Does that sound familiar? Although it is impossible to tell for sure, it appears as though Kapoor was taken into consideration when writing the story. The actor and her character both tell the story of carrying on her family’s legacy while facing scorn for her luxury.
Suhana was deployed in London after ending a relationship. She meets Michelin-starred chef Nakul (played astutely by Gulshan Devaiah), a smooth talker who immediately wins her over. That is the source of the problem. After discovering that he is a corporate blackmailer (among many other things), she is faced with a difficult decision: should she protect the nation’s secrets, her reputation, or her father’s job promotion? I won’t give anything away, but you could smell the next twist coming from a distance.
Ulajh aims to be a number of things: a critique of nepotism, of the way women in positions of power are treated unfairly at work, of sexist conjectures about how they got there, and, at the end, of why diplomacy is the best way to resolve international disputes. All of this causes the movie to overly serious about itself.
You’re taken aback by the interval, but the second part of Ulajh seems like it would work better as a web series, with more time to explore alternate plots. Whenever the ride comes to an abrupt stop, Ulajh rushes ahead, expecting the audience to follow along. Films about international conflicts have the challenge of trying to be regarded seriously while still depending on convenience to advance the plot. Untraceable, two people on the run from intelligence authorities arrive in India from London, and it is easy for an unauthorised person to breach a prime minister’s security convoy.
As would be expected, Janhvi steals the show in every frame of this Sudhanshu Saria film. As the girl who won’t sit quietly among her elders in front of a minister and even blackmails him, she enters the movie with a certain intensity. It’s brilliant that the same strategy subsequently comes back to haunt her.
When she gets into difficulty, though, she doesn’t manage to make you feel sorry for her. She shares the same powerlessness as Mili’s character. She shares Gunjan’s drive to succeed from her first movie, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl. The attempt to instill her acting prowess in our minds is akin to Ulajh’s instillation of its “talent exists despite nepotism” viewpoint. Parvez Shaikh and Sudhanshu, who both share writing credit, we see what you did there.
It is made abundantly clear in a scene intended to showcase Janhvi’s acting prowess and highlight Suhana’s desire for vengeance near the film’s conclusion. “Ab yeh bakri kya karegi?” queries Roshan’s persona. Janhvi says, “poora ka poora sher khaa jaayegi,” as the camera swiftly pans in for a close-up.
The supporting cast is what keeps the movie moving forward. Gulshan Devaiah is fantastic in the role of the “chef (?) spouting poetic lines in climax.” Adil Hussain has a few scenes, but in the final one, he steals the show as a worried parent. With a greyscale pleasant driving aura, Rajesh Tailang says hello. More screen time was warranted for Roshan Mathew. Meiyang Chang only has one memorable scene, and even that one is fleeting.
