CAST: DIRECTOR: RATING:

Irrfan Khan, Parvathy Tanuja Chandra

Aap-ne prodh shiksha ke bare mein toh suna hi hoga? I mean, adult education, where adult log are cradled gently and taught Ka, Kha, Ga… One, Two, Three? Qarib Qarib Singlle is a prodh love story where writer-director Tanuja Chandra takes on two 35-plus adults and walks them through the A, B, C of life, love, and love for life.

Already, given the choice of the age band of its lovers, QQS feels like a hatke film. In fact, in the broad brushstrokes that make up its two main characters, there are enough hatke details to entice us into thinking, hoping that QQS will be delightfully hatke all through. It’s not.

Its prodh people’s prem is platonic and swachch. Those double LLs in the film’s title are not a naughty allusion to some hankypanky, as in vertical action, oneon-one. They are simply a promise that it’ll make two singletons a happy twosome.

The tinkering is cosmetic and on the surface.

Despite the choices it makes and the average age of its couple, at its core QQS is conventional and very adolescent. The film, in fact, follows all the traditional Bollywood rules of sanskari dating and romance.

But, Qarib Qarib Singlle is also charming as hell because Irrfan Khan and Parvathy make the best unlikeliest pair ever and that makes this film — essentially a long date where we know what’s going to happen eventually — entertaining and fun.

Irrfan Khan, recently returned from a road trip to unravel and then help Piku’s self-discovery, here too conducts ishq tameez se, but full mazze le-le ke.

Qarib Qarib Singlle begins after the first instalment of life — of Jaya (Parvathy) and Yogi (Irrfan Khan) — is over. They’ve been through one set of relationships/marriage, and are now lolling around in life’s fallow bits, waiting for life to begin again... or not.

The film’s title