Gutur Gu review: Breezy, youthful and effervescent

 

Gutur Gu review: Breezy, youthful and effervescent

What: Gutur Gu on Mini TV featuring Gupt Gyan fame Vishesh Bansal and Ashlesha Thakur has the flushes of the first love nostalgia.

Gutur Gu

Gutur Gu’s first scene hooked me onto it – the sight of a coaching class where the Chemistry teacher is played by none other than Ajay Pal aka “Naidu” of the Dhumrapan Ad of Akshay Kumar that crops up at the screening of every film at the theater. Then it instantly shifts to the main protagonists – Anuj and Ritu, played by Vishesh Bansal and Ashlesha Thakur of the short ‘Gupt Gyaan’ fame, who play teenage students in this fresh and relatable tale of teenage romance. Ritu, a Paul Williams student, has just moved from Gurgaon to Bhopal while Anuj belongs to the city and studies in Bhojanagari Boys School.

They are as different as chalk and cheese – Ritu is modern and artistic, while Anuj is a cute simpleton who dilly dallies with his two friends and a cricket obsessed senior cum Love Guru , Amit Bhaiya OG.   

They are so different from each other yet get tangled together like grapevines. This six-episode series, each with an average runtime of 25 minutes, focuses on issues, and challenges that can uncover their notions and how it affects their relationship, while the intense parental pressure adds to their woes and dilemmas. It is full of fun and youthful verve, and yet there is an unexpected turn of events that makes their relationship more complicated and intense, given their perspectives, demographic and cultural mindset, and familial backgrounds.

Creator-Director Saqib Pandor (he had made the short Gupt Gyaan), along with co-writer Garima Kunzru, masterfully fleshes up interesting characters with the backdrop of the beautiful second-tier city and its colorful vignettes captured meticulously by DoP Sriram Ganapathy. The duo navigates the ups and downs that comes as a part and parcel of every relationship - strict parents, dating protocols, first kiss, conflicts, insecurities, and each of tenets flourishes episodically with an astute screenplay by Gunjan Saxena and smartly penned dialogues rendered with a tinge of the ‘Bhopali’ dialect. Pandor makes the narrative a roller-coaster ride by infusing some outrageously quirky moments  and balances them with other scenes that involve emotional wallop.

First Loves are always very special and it’s time to relive them with earnest performances from Vishesh and Ashlesha. Vishesh has an inherent decency and lover boy charm with the quintessential innocent looks that reminded me of director Rahul Rawail from his younger days. He is fun to watch and suitably complemented by his friends. Watch out the scene where they try to interpret the “you have got balls” compliment from Neha to Anuj. Ashlesha looks wonderful and appears to be a tad stiff to imbue her character with a requisite amount of vivacity. She was much better in the Family Man. But there is a commendable and easygoing chemistry between the two that lends essence even to their most insignificant engagements.

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