Shakun Batra’s newest directorial venture feels like a betrayal because all his other films held heavy subjects but they didn’t tend to be so complex. The first one hour of the two and a half hour long film was beautiful. Cinematographer Kushal Shah creates an atmosphere which is haunting and romantic at the same time.

It’s a technically brilliant film with music by the up and coming music director OAFF and costume director Anisha Adajania Shroff.

The film promised a lot from the trailers, the gorgeous looking frames, messy relationships, infidelity, infatuations and much more. It’s more about people dealing with past traumas and how it affects them in their future.

Gehraiyaan is Deepika Padukone’s film. Deepika looks beautiful in every frame she is in. Her laid back performance is one of the very few redeeming qualities of the film. Her co stars Siddhant Chaturvedi, Dhairya Karwa and Ananya Pandey all puts forth pretty decent performances. But the scene stealer was Naseeruddin Shah with his extended cameo. In one of the most beautiful scenes of the film Deepika and Shah were exquisite.

The mismatched writing in Gehraiyaan has interesting ideas up its sleeve, but doesn’t offer credible characters, just postures. The movie invited you in through its intimate camera moves, focusing on many images of gorgeous people kissing, caressing each other in the midst of deep blue currents.  But in doing so, it abandons the structured way of storytelling while constantly wobbling it’s way in order to find a new footing.