For Real Movie Reviews

Director Sona Jain makes an elegant debut with a sensitively crafted film on domestic strife and its detrimental effects on the psyche of vulnerable young minds. Anchoring her story in an upmarket Delhi household, the filmmaker tells a fine story of familial break-ups, heartbreak and longing through the eyes of a six-year-old. Indeed, a refreshing new take on domestic discord and the happy-unhappy family syndrome

For starters, this debut film is presented in spoken English, which immediately makes For Real a niche product, meant for select audiences who like to sample different fare. A slice of life story, delicately told, For Real is an intimate peep into an urban couple grappling with the twin burdens of career and family, a familiar cause for crisis amongst nuclear families in today’s hectic world. Though the film is slow and measured, what makes it bearable

A little girl named Shruti (Hassan) is bewildered that her mother, who she was otherwise close to, would want to spend time apart from her. Her head is brimming with conflicting thoughts when she goes to the railway station to receive her. While waiting for the train to arrive, her brother concocts a tale around throwaway toys they've bought, involving aliens from the Orion galaxy coming to earth as shapeshifters.

A beautiful woman with long black hair, in a green saree, sits alone in an open field while her little child pines to hold her by her arms. It’s a dream. And it occurs each night the six-year-old Shruti goes off to sleep. She wakes up quiet and grumpy in the mornings. It’s not that her mother’s dead. She just behaves so differently now that the child’s convinced the lady of the house (with shorter hair now) is truly an alien, not her mother.

For Real, directed by Sona Jain, is a thought-provoking but amateurish film about the breakdown of a marriage as seen through the eyes of a six-year-old girl. Sarita Chaudhary and Adil Hussain star as a couple struggling to keep a happy public face even as their marriage is slowly crumbling. It's their impressionable young daughter Shruti (played by Zoya Hasan) who's having the most trouble understanding the sudden changes, convinced in fact, that her mother's an alien.

A heart-wrenching account of marital discord, For Real sees the problems of countless modern nuclear families through the eyes of a child. Instances of children becoming casualties of their parents’ career and professional aspirations are not uncommon. In For Real, everybody involved is looking for something more from life. Father Dr Ravi Shukla (Hussain) is looking for better prospects as head of the family, London-returned mother Priya

Sona Jain’s For Real is a well-intentioned but stilted drama about a fractured marriage and how the tension between the parents impacts on their six-year-old daughter Shruti, who starts to believe that her mother is actually an alien. Jain, who has also written the film, delves fearlessly into a difficult subject – For Real attempts to show us how deeply traumatic parental discord is for a child. But Jain’s telling of the tale is painfully slow and mostly clumsy.

On the whole, although For Real is a well-made film, it is too philosophical to make any mark at the box-office.