Directed by Kamal D Nathani
Rating: * ½
Love is ...an unread diary. War-widow specialist Preeti Jhangiani (didn't she play one in her debut film Mohabbatein) gets down to read her dead soldier-lover's diary.
Half a sentence later, there's an electricity failure. The diary never returns...Neither does a mellow momentum that the narrative so desperately seeks to generate through the cold climes of Himachal.
With Love...Tumhara is not so much a film as a television soap about two solidiers, Vaid and Dabas, apparently bonding during the Kargil war, in a makeshift barrack that looks like a a set for a warehouse off-season sale.
Cut to another location. Soldier No 2 stands at Soldier No 1's papa's doorstep with the dead man's things.
Remember that moment in Rang De Basanti when mother Waheeda Rehman received air squadron Madhavan's things in a suitcase?
Films with an army backdrop always have a very humane tale to tell. So does this one. Lamentably director Nathani doesn't go beyond the ambience of a neat soap opera. The pacing is sluggish.... A kind of soap on a rope with no hope to whip up a lather.
The film does have a sweet timbre of romance trickling through its veins. But the atmosphere never develops into a likable triangle among a man woman and the ghost of her lover which comes in the way of her right to renewed happiness.Nakul Vaid has a charming aura to support his sketchy now-you-see-him-now-you-don't role. Parveen Dabas in the much meatier role has to go from soldier to lover to martyr....The transitions are undertaken in the spirit of a television mini-series with the commercial breaks replaced by sporadic soporific songs that tell us nothing about love and romance....except that they can be mighty boring for onlookers. Who says all the world loves a lover?
The girls are specially at a loss in the romantic cul de sac. Anupama Verma plays the rich bitch with a whining insistence that takes us back to her stint in the reality show Bigg Boss where she just goes on and on complaining.
Preeti Jhangiani in her author-backed role of the soldier's beloved who chooses to live with his memory, offers plasticity in place of passion.
She has some terrific moments of emotion with her screen father-in-law Sharat Saxena who wants her to marry his son's friend..Sadly noble intentions do not make a watchable film. With Love...Tumhara makes you weep more for there isn't than what is.
