Finding Fanny review: Arjun makes the best of Savio, Deepika is getting to be a relaxed performer

Finding Fanny is not a regular Bollywood film, it's for a very niche audience. Most filmmakers say that their films are different but take my word for it because this one is actually different. The story revolves around five characters and is set in a village called Pocolim in Goa where life is slow and simple. Their needs are minimal and they live what I would call a retired life. A young widow Angie (Deepika Padukone) decides to help the old postman of the village Fredie (Naseeruddin Shah) to find his long lost love. He is depressed because it's now, after 46 years he finds out that the love letter he wrote to the woman he loved actually never reached her.

In this mission of Finding Fanny, Angie ropes in her mother-in-law Rosie (Dimple Kapadia) the self-appointed Lady of Pocolim who calls the shots and throws her weight around with the locals. Savio (Arjun Kapoor) who loved Angie many years ago is back in town, he will drive the car as he is the only one who can, the car which belongs to Don Pedro, an artist who's interested in Rosalina. It actually is not the destination that matters here but it's the journey of these five characters completely different from each other but with clean hearts. There is an undercurrent of humour in the film, in fact some scenes will leave you in splits.

The characters set off to find long-lost love: the journey isn’t too long as the crow flies, but many home truths are uncovered as the miles go by. I really enjoyed Naseer’s performance in this one: he is as unmannered and unburdened by tics as he can be, and as bashful as a young lover in the first flush.

I’d pick Arjun Kapoor as a near-match. Arjun Kapoor has the right physicality for his role, and he makes the best of Savio, who once and forever loves the dimpled Angie, who , in turn, turns to him for some answers: Deepika is getting to be a relaxed performer, learning to put aside her rangy beauty to reach inside for something true. Dimple Kapadia shows just how sharp she can be, especially in a sequence towards the end where she fills the screen, but is encumbered by a dissatisfied curve to the mouth and an evidently heavily-padded posterior: yes, there are all kinds of fannies in the world. As Don Pedro, the florid painter with a thing for oversized bottoms, Pankaj Kapoor is mostly overdone flourish, rescuing his act with one great one, which is the gasp-inducing shocker of the film.