The Lunchbox

A woman makes a special lunch for her increasingly distant husband, only discover it never made it to him, but instead to another man, with whom she strikes up a relationship through messages passed in The Lunchbox.

Writer/director Ritesh Batra brings us a subtle epistolary love story that is especially quaint for being conducted via the dabbahwalas—messengers who deliver lunches to working Indians—rather than via email/chat/Twitter/whatever.

First, isn't it amazing what you can do when you when your minimum wage is 28 cents an hour? You know what they're not doing in India? Looking to find robots to replace low skill jobs.

Anyway, food is a critical part of this love story, so it wouldn't work in another medium.

The always sensitive Irrfan Khan (The Namesake, Slumdog Millionaire) plays an older man retiring from a clerical job he is very efficient at, and dealing somewhat hostilely with his young replacement. Nimrat Kaur plays the young mother who cannot seem to kindle her husband's interest.

Well, you know. Nimrat Kaur as your neglected housewife...well, okay, I suppose I've had to believe less plausible things. (She's lovely, of course, but they've anti-glammed her.)

Anyway, the movie shows how the relationship between Khan and Kaur affects their "real life" relationships and how their bond develops.

There's not a whole lot to write about it: It's a simple love story, simply told. My mom, who doesn't go to a lot of movies, was taken by the premise and went out to see it. Of course, what she wanted was the dabba itself, the neat little circular container that separates different kinds of foods.

The Boy enjoyed it, and that's my usual sign that my own enjoyment isn't just a matter of my advancing age. Heh.