Bombay Rose Movie Review: Indian Animated Film Makes a Splash at Venice Festival, Critics Sing Praises

Indian cinema is yet to venture into many territories. We are yet to make a great creature feature. And we are yet to make a great animated movie, without the mythological characters. One step at a time, but the Indian animation scene might change soon. A new film, Bombay Rose, is making a splash at the ongoing Venice Film Festival. The movie, directed by Gitanjali Rao, had its premiere on August 29, opening the Critics Week. After the Venice Fest, the movie will also be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. Indian theatres might have to wait longer to watch the film.

Bombay Rose is a movie about a flower seller in the city of Mumbai who moonlights as a club dancer. She has to make a choice between her lover or her family. The animated film has been painted frame by frame, as per reports, which is quite a task. Gitanjali has been working on the movie for the past six years as the animator, writer and editor. And it seems like that her hard work has paid off. Here is what the critics are saying about Bombay Rose.

Variety was very praising of the movie.  They wrote, "There’s such an abundance of labored-over beauty in “Bombay Rose” that it feels almost churlish to say its storytelling is less enrapturing: Rao, who animated, edited and wrote the film on her own, seems to be least assured on the last of those tasks. Unfolding multiple love stories, past and present, between the denizens of a bustling working-class community in India’s largest city, with sporadic forays into Indian mythology and Bollywood fantasy, Rao’s narrative structure is more ambitious than it is involving — perhaps even a little overstuffed at 96 minutes," They also praised the movie's background score but criticised it for being "over-stuffed".

A point that was also noted by The Guardian. They wrote, "Gitanjali Rao’s film paints a luminous valentine to the city in all of its squalor and beauty and audaciously frames social-realist drama as a sentimental folk tale. The disparate ingredients do not always gel. But in fits and starts Bombay Rose casts quite a spell."

Watch The Trailer of Bombay Rose Here:

Screen Daily wrote, "Bombay Rose is at heart a dark story, yet it can also shine brightly, dealing with heartbreak and hope, a perilous life in the slums of Mumbai in which death is always close by but a big-screen Bollywood escapist ending is equally only a cinema ticket away. A soundtrack which merges the original music of Yoav Rosenthal with soulful classics from the likes of Caetano Veloso smooths our way through the silken story."

Film Companion was in awe of the home-grown film. They wrote, "It’s a beautiful film. It’s also a film that’s hard to put in a box and say, “This is what it’s all about!” The laziest descriptor you could slap on it is probably “dreamlike”, but the 90-something minutes teem with waking life."

We are absolutely hoping that Bombay Rose paves a path for more mainstream animated movies in India. For a country that loves its cartoons so much, we surely have missed out on tapping into the genre.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 30, 2019 10:08 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).