In Roam Rome Mein (English: Every Inch of My Body; Roam in Rome), the lead female character (Tannishtha Chatterjee) gets anxious when the clock hits 7.30. That is also the time in the morning that the protagonist - a sexist (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) - shudders himself up from surreal dreams that he dreams about her - his sister - who has gone missing in Rome. Unable to contact her, he flies to the Italian city - known for its violence and male chauvinism - despite his own marriage scheduled a few days later. What happens in Rome as the brother looks for his younger sister and finds out more about her - the findings often putting him in a tizzy - than he could when she was living with him with their parents. Chatterjee, in her directorial debut, aims high with this feminist recipe whose highlight is the narration. The Hindi-English dramedy is through the brother's perspective, an inactive observer when their father used to put restrictions on her. But now he is startled to find the other side of his sister, and that too from other people who are not even close to her. Unfortunately, all of this looks forced, giving out a feel of artificiality, especially in those scenes where feminist agenda is underlined and preached through dialogues exchanged between Siddiqui's characters and others. Even the humour, which there is plenty of, does not help it stray from the artificial nature, making it all look like an unpolished dish that has been served without much afterthought. The attention to details is terrible. The surrealistic elements are confusing (rightly so!) but they do not gel with the dramatic narrative that Chatterjee uses to project her stark feminist views set in a city that was an epitome of machismo during its historical prime. Siddiqui performs well in the repetitive scenes that is one of the few saving graces in the film (reminding you of Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day (1993)) but the overall pretentious nature (the English-speaking, the characterless characters, and constant pushing on feminist agenda) dilutes his work and that of his co-actors like Chatterjee and Isha Talwar and outputs a drama that is neither effective nor entertaining. Roam Rome Mein is a mixed bag. TN.
(Watched and reviewed at its India premiere at the 21st MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.)
