/> Starring: Fardeen Khan, Esha Deol, Satish Shah, Kirron Kher, Raj Zutsi, Tarina Patel, Sadiya Siddiqui, Mukul Dev
Story Screenplay Dialogue & Direction by Meghna Gulzar
Rating: ** ½

"Does it have to be about sex only?" Esha Deol, playing a newly wedded honeymooner in an arranged marriage that ostensibly seems to be coming apart at the seams even before the honeymoon is over, asks her ever-accommodating husband churlishly.

What does marriage have in store for the average newly married couple?

Meet Abhay and Ritika, they are the perfectly mismatched couple. In a preamble that Mani Rathnam could have conceived for Saathiya (if only Viveik Oberoi and Rani Mukherjee had fallen in love after marriage!) writer-director Meghna Gulzar, who's clearly traeding much more comfortable ground this time after her debut in Filhaal, the couple meeta.

Within the next ten minutes Abhay and Ritika are married and off on their honeymoon. No time wasted, no frills, and certainly no humbug....Meghna Gulzar treads on a terrain that's more in Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee's league than within her super-gifted dad Gulzar's domain.

The mood of the honeymoon tale is an appealing shade of pale. The young director treads softly into the bedroom, creating for the nervous couple a kind of desirable paradise that is obtainable with just a little brush against each other's hands or a whispered huddle in the foggy romanticism of Ooty.

When it comes to creating a supple and slender scenario of spousal synergy Meghna Gulzar gets it right. The couples whether old and cranky (Satish Shah and Kirron Kher) or bold and horny (Bikram Saluja and Perizaad Zorabian) manage to create a telling contrast with the bewildered protagonists as they discover, in hushed motions, that the true essence of compatibility lies not in clutching hands but holding on to one another's trust and confidence in the head rather than the bed.

A trifle too romantically idealistic at heart? Perhaps...Just Married aims to portray marriage in mellow pastel colours. There are no over-the-top interludes, no moments in the film that the director's mentors Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Gulzar would frown at.

She melds modernity into traditional values with understated sensitivity. If we see a couple making out in the woods, we also see a wife coyly putting on bangles in front of the mirror as though she were paying a homage to Hema Malini in Khushboo.

If Pritam's background score suggests a time gone-by, the confident editing patterns take the narration into areas in Ooty and other less visible places where the honeymoon becomes a playing field for emotions that would set the pace for the rest of the marriage that we won't be able to see.

Seeing isn't believing in Just Married. Meghna Gulzar often uses smiles and silences to convey emotions. Words are never allowed to get in the way...not even Gulzar's lush lyrics that are resolutely played in the background.

Frequently the pace drops...as though the director was allowing the characters and their languorous mood to take over.

Don't look for hard rain and pelting sunshine in this muted mellow-drama. What we get are those warm and familiar vignettes from a marriage that we've all experienced. The comfort of the familiar never leaves this cosy look at a honeymooning couple's attempts to come to terms with love, marriage and, yes, sex. Both Fardeen and Esha escape the trappings of the masala cinema to turn in sincere performances. Esha often looks as scrubbed and vulnerable as her mom Hema Malini did in Gulzar's Khushboo.

Bikram Saluja and Perizaad Zorabian as the ever-willing love birds define their roles with ample exuberance. But Mukul Dev and Sadiya Siddiqui as a Muslim couple wither in hazily defined parts.