A disobedient teenage daughter Kavita (Mrunmayee Lagoo) of a troubled pair doesn't know what to do with her life. So she starts a journey away from her family with a lonely, ignored but courageous middle-aged woman to Goa where she saves turtles... and herself.
The director of the film, Raja Unninathan, has his heart in the right place.
He makes a world of chatty, perspiring parties, cheap wits and one-night stands for Kavita. But the words sound more alike reproductions of the emotional outbursts linked with the age gap rather than literal situations produced in a specific crisis.
In "Hello Zindagi", veteran actress Neena Gupta and multi-talented actor Kanwaljeet Singh especially the latter are in fine form as Kavita's parents. But the written material continually lets all the actors down.
The one player who manages to hold her head above the material offered is Kitu Gidwani. Kitu plays the dignified unloved but outwardly rich wife.
Her film's segment with her unresponsive though not cruel husband (Amit Behl) has some fine moments including the one when Kitu goes into the kitchen to get coffee made by her hubby and then pours it calmly down the sink.
Gidwani's trip to Goa with the unruly Kavita is charted with love. What Kitu shares with the Rima Lagoo's daughter (Mrunmayee) repeats Jessica Tandy's bonding with Bridget Fonda in Deepa Mehta's 'Camilla.'
Apart from that Kitu and Kavita don't go skinny-dipping. The dimmest spot in the movie is its lack of sexual energy. The actor's are almost invariably frigid in their ideas and hopes. A thwarted irresolution runs across the story profile rendering the actors weak and unsuccessful.
The save-the-turtles message at the end seems forced.
However, there's enough fondness and warmth in the kinships shared by Kavita with Kanwaljeet and Kitu to make film worth a watch.
"Hello Zindagi" doesn't bowl you over. But it makes you happy even when the director shows that trite and un-comfortable social purpose, which makes the movie look like a documentary on how to save teens and turtles when they don't want to be saved without drowning in the attempt. (With Input from Agencies)
