Oscar-nominated director Mira Nair has attempted to distil love, lust and loss from Vikram Seth’s gargantuan epic novel ‘A Suitable Boy’ and transplant those engaging 1,000 plus pages into a riveting web series.
The succinct trailer of Nair’s new project, which will premiere on BBC One, strikes all the right notes.
Actress Tabu and Ishaan Khatter are engaged in a clandestine affair and it sets the proverbial house on fire, while actress Tanya Maniktala as the feisty Lata seems well-cast.
Tabu is in her element as a seductive courtesan, while Katter — her much, younger and forbidden lover and son of a powerful politician — seems perfectly in sync with their unconventional affair.
Their intimate scenes seem tastefully shot and gives you the feels. If there’s one actress in Indian cinema who can be seductive without trying too hard, it’s Tabu, and director Nair seems to have tapped into this effectively.
The first reveal points towards Nair painting a rich tapestry in nostalgia-filled tones where dreams and destruction coexist in post-partition India. You can smell the political reality where communal and rural divides run high.
Set in the fictional town of Bhrahmpur, ‘A Suitable Boy’ is a period tale of four families set in the early post-Independence India. There’s matriarch Mrs Rupa Mehra whose life ambition is to find a suitable boy for her younger daughter Lata.
The web series has been condensed to six episodes of one hour each and its trailers seem suitably alluring.
