‘Kaaf Kangana’ brings cross-border love into focus
Critics point out that Indian girl falling for a Pakistani boy story has been done before
The makers of ‘Kaaf Kangana’, a period film about cross-border love, released the feature’s first trailer recently to mixed reviews.
Most critics were of the view that the movie wasn’t telling an original story.
An Indian Sikh girl falling for a Pakistani Muslim boy on one of her family’s pilgrimages to Nankana Sahib in Lahore has been seen too many times on screens (remember the Urdu classic ‘Laakhon Mein Ek’ or 1999’s ‘Teray Pyar Mein?’).
Besides, if the trailer is anything to go by, the screenplay is loaded with cliches associated with commercial cinema of the 1990s: there is heightened melodrama, an old-fashioned item number, cheap action sequences, and so on.
The only saving grace of the movie will be its dialogues, penned by the award-winning playwright and screenwriter Khalil ur Rehman Qamar (‘Sadqay Tumhare’ and ‘Punjab Nahi Jaungi’). Qamar is also debuting as a director with this movie.