silvan-desouza After DCH,LEELA yet again explored the love of 2 people from different age groups, surprisingly both films had Dimple Kapadia who has a love track with a younger guy. The film narrates a story of immigrants, who settle in US They show 2 Indian families, One being Deepti Naval who stays with her son after divorcing her husband Gulshan Grover who loves someone else. Dimple and Vinod Khanna have an open marriage, Dimple goes to US as a teacher and slowly a young boy falls for her. The film is treated with maturity, shunning melodrama and is well handledDirection is good Music is decent, Jagjit Singh's voice gives the songs an extra touch.Vinod Khanna has a smaller role and he is excellent, Dimple Kapadia is superb in her role, Amol Mhatre as Chris/Krishna is superb, Gulshan grover is good, Deepti Naval is good too rest are okay

Pro Jury *** This comment contains spoilers. *** LEELA (2002) is a modern day (India) Indian-in-America movie. LEELA attempts to have a realistic plot played out in a realistic manner. The film seeks to have common real-life dialog. The film tries to have the highest level of competent visual direction. LEELA tries to be great in every way. Sadly, this good intentioned movie pretty much fails across the board.As a modern drama, LEELA is not horrible, but it is also no where near great either. LEELA rates above a student film, but below a Hollywood level production. LEELA is missing dry, sober, real-life dialog at moments when it needs it most. Maybe the script is fine at these moments, but the delivery is just not realistic. No raw emotion.The condom-walk-into-the-room segment was the weakest scene among many. There were no great slice of life scenes, in my opinion.

abhi-9 This seemed to be a good movie, I thought it would be a good movie, and throughout the movie I was hoping it would be a meaningful use of my time, and yes, I have to admit that the acting talent of Dimple Kapadia and Deepti Naval where truly commendable, but despite the best effort this movie falls short of effectively conveying a meaningful message, which it seems is it seemed was what Somnath Sen is trying to do. The final point comes short and the ending seemed kind of unsatisfactory after all that happens; a bit like real life in that respect but movies unlike real life ends in about 2hrs and the ending should leave the audience satisfied, if indeed that was the director's intention. This falls short in that respect and that is what disappoints me the most.Another aspect that concerned me was the national stereo-typing of the American characters - they all seem to be carved out of the same block. Seems to me that most American characters in Indian English movies are based upon how common Indians themselves perceive Americans to be like and it is clear that no effort has been made to bring any sense of depth or complexity to any American in the movie.These two aspects put together they make for a disappointing story.

CAMKG There have been quite a few films in the last couple of years that have tried to breakup certain stereotypes ad cliches: 1) The opinion South Asian immigrants have about whites. 2) The opinion South Asian immigrants have about their peers who are born and brought up in the west. 3) The opinion born-in-the-west desis have about South Asian immigrants.Films like American Desi, Bend It Like Beckham, Bollywood/Hollywood have all succeeded to different degrees in breaking these stereotypes and striking a new balance in terms of awareness and acceptance. Leela is another film with similar aspirations and succeeds almost completely in what it sets out to achieve.Leela is a dramatic film that not only attempts to further demolish these stereotypes but it also gives its characters unique identities, identitites that go through a process of change and understanding as the film unfolds.There are a lot of things that impress you about Leela. Starting with the screenplay. It has been written very tightly as in never to slacken the pace of the film or loosen the grip it has on its characters. The dialogue is very intelligent and each character is developed very uniquely. The plot is essentially about a student-teacher affair and how it affects the two, but their subplots and their relationships with other people in their lives give the characters a lot of depth and empathy.Leela has been blessed with a good soundtrack from Jagjit Singh and Gulzar and also the production values and technical credits have done extremely well. The ensemble cast of Leela which includes Dimple Kapadia, Amol Mhatre, Deepti Naval, Vinod Khanna and Gulshan Grover among others do a terrific job with performances.Somnath Sen is a newcomer I believe (at least I am not aware of any previous work by him). But as a writer and director he does an extremely mature and comprehensive job of dealing with the merging sensibilities of two worlds. At the end of the day, Leela is good storytelling and a film about interesting people. People like you and me. 9/10.