Vidya Balan cries a lot throughout Hamari Adhuri Kahani.
Her character, Vasudha, is a timid and relatively mousy woman, one who has let herself be cowed down by patriarchy even when no patriarch is present in her life, and she frequently flies into panicked hysterics.
But the character and her motivations are not why I think Balan -- one of our finest actresses -- is crying.
I think she’s weeping her eyes out because, with every take, she realises how unforgivably atrocious this film is. Mohit Suri has been an efficient director of plot-heavy cinema (with plots often filched from other places), a man who trades almost exclusively in weatherbeaten movie cliches but has always done so with some speed and slickness.
This time, working from a script written by Mahesh Bhatt, his focus appears to be not story but, simply, sadness.
Everyone in this film, in virtually every frame, looks pained.
The relentless background score swells to a crescendo, and then swells up again, to another crescendo.
The characters are all pathetic folk with twisted childhoods.