Could do with more Koirala in movie Dear Maya

Dear Maya Direction: Sunaina Bhatnagar Actors: Manisha Koirala, Shreya Chaudhary, Madiha Imam Rating:

The beautiful Manisha Koirala returns to the silver screen after a long and successful battle against cancer. And she makes for an evocative lead in Sunaina Bhatnagar’s Dear Maya The film is about a lonely old woman who has given up on life. Maya Devi is distrusting and sad; her glass is always half empty.

Then, schoolgirls Ira and Ana (Shreya Chaudhary and Madiha Imam) decide to add colour to her life by writing love letters to the spinster signed by a fictitious ‘Ved’. The film traces the transformation of the reclusive woman as the letters keep coming, and the lessons the two schoolgirls learn as a result.

Manisha shines throughout. As she goes from all-black with a dagger dangling at her waist to smiling, confident and clothed in red, her subtlety brings the relatively simple tale to life. Where the film falters is in its screenplay. Manisha is given virtually no lines in the opening scenes. Those that follow are a compendium of clichés from the ’80s. “Right time pe shaadi nahi hui, isliye she is depressed.”

“Think of it as social work. Hum kisi boring lady ki boring life mein Shah Rukh Khan bhej rahe hain.” The story is otherwise evocatively told. The wrinkles on Manisha’s face, the use of colour, light and shadow are all so artful that they require no words.