There are limited ways a love triangle can go in film, theatre, and literature. It’s a familiar setup: the initial spark, the messy buildup, the inevitable trials, and then a series of moral compromises and a resolution that may or may not stand up to moral or logical scrutiny. The triangle is rarely what sets one such story apart from another. It is what the writer and filmmaker do with the people that are trapped in it.
That is where Anurag Kashyap’s provocatively titled Manmarziyaan scores highest. In what stands as his first bona fide love story, Kashyap, working from Kanika Dhillon’s volatile screenplay, presents three individuals who possess an unusual degree of autonomy in their thoughts, impulses, and decisions. They are not necessarily sensible, admirable, or even fair; they simply want what they want. For much of its running time, the film dares to let them.
Dhillon fills the frame with people who wear their flaws right on their sleeves. They are loud, messy, impulsive, wildly irresponsible, and completely relatable because of it. Rumi, Vicky, and Robbie run on their own erratic impulses rather than what a standard script demands of them. Their selfishness isn’t treated like a moral defect that needs fixing by the third act; it is the actual fuel powering the story. That makes the title hit home. These three live purely by their marzi, right up until the movie itself steps in and stops letting them.
You can spot Kashyap’s hand all over the proceedings. Aarti Bajaj’s restless editing chops up the traditional romance beats, especially around the midpoint, proving just how much nervous energy you can wring out of a classic two-guys-one-girl setup. Then there are those dancing twins popping up across scenes, a bizarre, almost surreal little visual trick that mirrors the constant tug-of-war inside Rumi’s head. None of this completely rewrites the love triangle formula, but it gives every familiar bend in the road that unhinged Kashyap edge.
On paper, Manmarziyaan leans on a familiar Bollywood setup. Its lead characters exist in that classic movie bubble where nobody ever seems to worry about a day job, monthly rent, or actual bills. Pyaar is the sole center of gravity here, balanced by a cheeky new spin on pure physical desire that Manmarziyaan calls fyaar. The story catches you off guard when Rumi (Taapsee Pannu) and Vicky (Vicky Kaushal) bring this up themselves, bluntly hashing out the friction between temporary high-voltage lust and actual emotional staying power.
Even with that escapist core, Manmarziyaan rarely takes the easy way out. Amit Trivedi’s score, even during its occasionally repetitive stretches, feels less like background music and more like a narrative motor, locked in step with Shellee’s razor-sharp lyrics to lay bare what these chatty, conflicted characters are really feeling.
Manmarziyaan’s real ace up its sleeve is its Amritsar backdrop. Sylvester Fonseca’s camera gets right in there with an almost suffocating intimacy, hauling you through tight Sikh family living rooms, gritty back alleys, and street corners fragrant with hot jalebis. Pannu plays her hot-headed Punjabi heroine with total commitment; while her early screaming matches feel a little pushed, she settles into a grounded, magnetic rhythm the moment she gets caught in the tug-of-war between the two men.
Kaushal gets the meatier character arc and absolutely runs with it as the ultimate hometown runaway, a guy who casually dumps costly engineering and MBA degrees just to play DJ gigs. His reckless, zero-plan vibe hits its peak in that fantastic moment when Rumi discovers she just eloped with a guy whose getaway car has a half-empty tank, zero cash, and no clue what comes next. It’s hilarious, stupid, and weirdly romantic all at once, turning the whole first hour into a self-contained little gem.
The narrative logic begins to wobble the moment Robbie enters the frame. A suave, reticent Londoner back in Amritsar to find a traditional bride, he is introduced alongside a choosy mother, an empathetic father, and a shady matchmaker (played brilliantly by Saurabh Sachdeva). Dhillon uses Sachdeva’s character to deftly satirize the performative rituals of Indian arranged marriages, anchoring the circus with a warm, quiet scene between Robbie and his father on what marriage means across generations.
Yet things get murky fast. For a guy set up as sensible, mature, and observant, Robbie’s decision to tie the knot with Rumi without ever checking if her heart is actually in it feels like a massive logic gap. When challenged on it, his line, “I was in love,” sounds hopelessly weak for a man who knows full well what kind of messy baggage she brings. The problem isn’t that Robbie acts irrationally. Messy, irrational decisions are what make a story worth watching. The issue is that the script itself doesn’t seem to get the specific brand of foolishness it forces on him.
Rumi ping-ponging between the two guys is where the movie really cooks, mainly because it feels messy and genuinely unpredictable. Robbie just shuts down right when he needs to lay his cards on the table, which makes his big emotional collapse after overhearing Rumi and Vicky land with a bit of a thud. Bachchan gives him a quiet, gentle dignity, but you can’t ignore how much his acting style clashes with everyone else’s. When the heavy drama kicks in, he occasionally slips into an older school of Bollywood melodrama, his grief expressed through visibly heightened tears while Pannu and Kaushal operate in a far more instinctive, volatile registe
Manmarziyaan’s sharpest drop in momentum occurs in the climax. Having built complex, stubborn leads, the writing surrenders to genre conventions at the final stretch. The intricate character dynamics that took hours to untangle are resolved almost overnight, forcing the leads into sudden emotional U-turns.
But by the time Rumi makes her final call, the decision is a total left turn that completely undermines the independence that made her character work in the first place. It’s a sort of shy apology to the audience for putting them through such a crazy ride, and a crowd-pleasing ending to boot.
That’s where Manmarziyaan comes up against its biggest contradiction. Kashyap’s energetic, stylish direction glosses over the rough edges of much of the script, making a familiar premise seem far sharper than it has any right to be. But as soon as the screenplay provides a safe, traditional resolution for these characters, you realise that all that fresh air was generated strictly from the freedom they were given early on.
What remains is an unusual hybrid: a rash, noisy, emotionally tangled love story built upon a familiar Bollywood skeleton. By the time it ends, Manmarziyaan leaves behind the fuzzy aftertaste of having endured an upgraded, considerably more reckless descendant of Basu Chatterjee’s sublime Rajnigandha, or an unvarnished cousin to Maneesh Sharma’s Shuddh Desi Romance. Yet, for most of its running time, the film had something better going for it: three characters determined to live entirely on their own terms. It is only in the final stretch that Manmarziyaan loses its own marzi.
Rating: ★★★
P.S. The international title, ‘Husband Material’, mistakenly markets Manmarziyaan as a lightweight romantic comedy, a label this fiery, complex film constantly fights against.
Manmarziyaan is now streaming on Zee5.
