A Movie You Might Have Missed #81 — The Lunchbox

It's been 12 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

Can you fall in love with someone you have never met?

A mistaken delivery in Mumbai’s famously efficient lunchbox delivery system (Mumbai’s Dabbawallahs) connects a young housewife to a stranger in the dusk of his life. They build a connection through notes in the lunchbox. Gradually, this connection promises to move past the confines of the lunchbox.

A nice concept that developed from the filmmaker thinking about a documentary about the Mumbai lunchbox delivery system.

This is a good film but it does at a deliberate pace. The story rests on the stars to powerful performances in roles that demand understatement. They deliver in spades. I also really loved the aunty upstairs who we never see but only hear coaching the young wife in her cooking and fills in with emergency spices and ingredients. There are a lot of touches of humor throughout that make this a very enjoyable movie.

This filmmaker is known for his ambiguous endings and I'm annoyed even after two viewings over his lack of giving us a solid happy ending. Here is the place where we don't want imagination, we want to see it play out for ourselves. That is a small part of this lovely movie.

Rating — Introduction to Bollywood (come on in, the water's fine!)