A matter of life above death                                                                                                                                                     

Club60 is not the sort of film that will have you rolling in the aisles. Neither will it have you running out of face tissue. Yet, it is a film that has some of most genuine humour, and most naturally heart-tugging moments on offer.

Debutant director Sanjay Tripathy, who has also written the story-screenplay-dialogue, has been making content for television, most memorable being the science series, Turning Point. With this venture, he arrives on the film scene, with some promise! Club60 could well be the turning point of his career.

An ensemble cast, comprising Farouque Shaikh, Sarika, Raghubir Yadav, Tinnu Anand, Suhasini Mulay, Satish Shah, Sharat Saxena, Harsh Chhaya, Himani Shivpuri, Vineet Kumar, Viju Khote and Zarina Wahab (cameo), playing their ages, rise and shines, in well-defined roles. Farouque is pensive, reflective and grieving for most of the film, while Raghubir is the loud-mouth, over-friendly, chatter-box, marking extremes in characterisation. The others fall somewhere in between.

In a long voice-over that accompanies the titles and opening montage, Farouque tells the audience about the reason for he and his wife (Sarika) moving from Pune to Mumbai—the death of their grown-up son and the ensuing acute depression that drove Farouque to try and end his life. They seek escape, but the megapolis fails to provide the antidote to the grieving doctor couple, mainly the father. It takes a neighbour with an incredible zest for life (Raghubir) to convince them to join Club 60, where Farouque meets Raghubir’s tennis ‘gang’, four apparently odd-ball, 60-ish characters, Tinnu, Satish, Sharat and Vineet. Soon, Farouque learns that there is more to life than nursing the wound caused by the death of a loved one.

If Farouque is dignified, studied and restrained, Raghubir is the perfect foil, with an over-the- top performance. Long dialogues come naturally and gracefully to Sarika, who is enjoying her third run in filmdom. All the ‘gang’ members come across as slices of life. Ankit Batala has only one scene, as the lead couple’s son, and the other notable young actor, a hooker, is played slickly by Mona Wasu.

Sanjay Tripathy is guilty of using co-incidence and repetition a couple of times each, the dialogue is, on occasion, a literal translation of English proverbs into Urdu, some characters speak with inconsistent accents and vocabularies, some humorous scenes are off-colour, but you forgive him these indulgences and shortcomings, since, in totality, the film overflows with sincerity.

Rating: ***