Lost movie review: Yami Gautam's new film is imperfect, impressive, important, all at once

Cast: Yami Gautam, Pankaj Kapur, Rahul Khanna, Neil Bhoopalam, Pia Bajpiee, Tushar Pandey

Director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury 

Language: Hindi, Bengali 

Spoilers ahead 

Within the first 10 minutes of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury‘s Lost, we see the helplessness of a sister searching for her lost brother, the integrities of media industry, an endearing bond between a girl and her grandfather, and a love story that’s likely to take an unexpected turn, and all of this assembled together by the meticulous cinematography of Avik Mukhopadhyay. The lanes and homes of Kolkata engulf you in their ordinariness, and you can smell the busyness that surrounds the city of joy.

At its heart is a journalist named Vidhi, played by Yami Gautam. She’s searching for Ishaan (Tushar Pandey of Pink and Chhichhore fame). He’s in love with Ankita (Pia Bajpiee) but fate and fortunes have other plans. Just like Vidya Balan in Sujoy Ghosh’s gorgeous Kahaani (2012), the basic crux of Lost is search. The moniker is, at first, more literal than metaphorical, and just like how Balan was searching for her lost husband, Gautam searches for this lost young man. But Balan’s search was driven by despair, Gautam’s more out of curiosity. She’s a journalist, this is a story she needs to crack, a mystery that she needs to solve.

She narrates the facts of the story to her grandfather (the always affectionate Pankaj Kapur) with glee and utmost precision, and even though the facts are chilling to the core, the duo breaks into amusing moments, like how grandparents play with their grandchildren. There’s a terrific scene where Kapur, while feeding Upma and Sambhar to Gautam, talks about the tragedy and irony of violence, people being labeled with random tags like Jihadis and Maoists, and in micro seconds, goes back to praising his Upma and Sambhar. It’s only an actor of his caliber that could pull such unpredictable shift in tone off.

But Gautam puts up a commendable performance too. As stated, at first, she’s eager to crack the complexities of the story, with new characters coming in, but as she digs deeper, the emotions begin to unravel. In a tense conversation with her boyfriend Jeet (an underwhelming Neil Bhoopalam), we sense this isn’t a story for her anymore. She reads out tweets about the cases of missing people across India with the hashtag Lost. This is where the title gets more intense. The background music fits well into the noir-like narrative; make no mistake, this isn’t a pulpy thriller with twists thrown in for theatrical effect.

The characters, no matter how intense their conflicts are, barely raise a voice. This is a deeply restrained film with some admirable reactions to alarming situations. Look at how Kapur reacts when two fellas threaten to kidnap and kill him. Look at how Rahul Khanna responds to Gautam’s enthusiasm in digging deeper into the case, even though he’s stiff in some scenes. Chowdhury’s filmmaking nuances here are reminiscent of Pink, he uses the spaces around him and puts them to good use. There are multiple shots of strangers and random crowd that fill the space of his lenses.

And just like Pink, the finale is both predictable yet powerful. Gautam hounds after a shocking discovery that she lost, where the title takes a metaphorical turn. Before the credits begin to roll, a voiceover tells us how things could be alright after a point, and the words that pop up on the screen suggest she never lost, and neither did this imperfect but impressive film.

Rating 3 (out of 5 stars)

The film streams on Zee5 from February 16

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