Movie Review : Piku (2015)

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Rating : 4.3/5
Genre : Drama
Year : 2015
Running time : 2 hours 3 minutes
Director : Shoojit Sircar
Cast : Deepika Padukone, Amitabh Bachchan, Irrfan Khan, Raghuvir Yadav, Jishu Sengupta, Moushumi Chatterjee
Kidwise Rating: PG

Piku was so cute. I loved it. Yes, I was going in with lowered expectations, so it was a nice surprise to actually enjoy it as much as I did.

Deepika Padukone is Piku Banerjee, architect daughter of doddering, constipated intellectual Bhashkor Banerjee (Bachhan), and they live in Chittaranjan Park with trusted servant Budhan. Both father and daughter are quirky, to put it kindly, he more than her. The main topic of discussion in the Banerjee household is the health of Bhashkor’s digestive tract. Daily motion, pun intended, is what Bhashkor aspires to.

Piku struggles to maintain a semblance of a personal life with a cantankerous father on one hand and a busy professional life on the other. Good friend Syed (Sengupta) is almost part of the family. When Piku meets Rana (Khan), a taxi-stand owner, they clash almost immediately. Their “friendship” goes downhill from there.

This film captures the sweetness of the father-daughter relationship without getting too sappy about it. There is a push-and-pull, a constant bickering and frustration galore, but Sircar underscores with a subtle, yet deft hand what Piku and Bhashkor mean to each other. Sircar brings the Bengali milieu to life. From Bhashkor’s liberal outlook on women and marriage, to Piku’s own independent point of view, to Piku’s mashi’s exuberant attitude, it is like Sircar has carved out a giant slice of Bengali-ism and put it out on screen for us. to It doesn’t hurt of course that the setting, the characterizations and the situations exude realistic, often laugh-out-loud humor.

Deepika is phenomenal here. From the deep kohl-ed eyes to the very Bengali “hain”, Deepika IS Piku. Pre-viewing I was a little queasy about Amitabh, because he tends to overact in certain situations. Thankfully that didn’t happen here, and although his accent slipped a couple of times, he was a treat to watch. Then there’s Magnificent Irrfan, able to go from heated disagreement to soft humor so beautifully. We also have the pleasure of seeing the lovely Moushumi Chatterjee portray Piku’s mashi, and veteran actor Raghuvir Yadav Bhashkor’s old-time doctor friend.

It is true that this film revolves around talk of “motion” – and in specifics: color, consistency, the works. You’d think that one would tire of such a film. After all how long can someone take all this talk of shit? Quite a while, I tell you. Because in between all that droning on about bowel movements Shoojit Sircar manages, amazingly, to tell us a nice little story of the ties that bind and keep us close. That tagline of “motion se hi emotion”? Spot on. In more ways that one.

Kidwise: Some talk of sex, virgins 🙂 and marital relationships. Note that is talk only, very little of it, in passing. On the whole this film is pretty family-friendly.