Varun Grover manages to articulate through the film Kiss that cinema is still the place where all our hopes converge, where all wounds can be healed, and where empathy will replace intolerance.It begins when the lights fade in a theatre. That hush before the image shivers to life, somehow we believe we are simple observers, seated in the dark, watching a story unfold that belongs to someone else. We think it’s their lives, their heartbreak, their triumph, their small glances loaded with unsaid things. We imagine them unaware of us, as if we are invisible voyeurs, granted the privilege of watching without being watched. There’s a strange thrill in that: to see without consequence, to peer into the private, the sacred, and call it fiction. But what if that silence isn’t anonymity? What if what plays out on screen isn’t theirs but yours? What if you’re not just looking, but being looked at? And not by others, but by yourself. What if the theatre was a mirror, and the film, your life? What if you are both the watcher and the watched? Both audience and actor. And the story, no matter how far it strays, always finds its way back to you.That’s what cinema dares to do. Not to show you the world, but to hold a mirror up to your face when you least expect it. It doesn’t speak in answers. It doesn’t beg to be understood. It draws blood from the places you buried too deep to name. It makes you ache for the things you did, the things you didn’t do. It drags you through memory and regret and tenderness like a reel spinning towards a frame you can’t unsee. And somehow, it gives you something resembling closure. Not the kind that ties things neatly but the kind that lets you exhale. That’s why cinema matters. Not because it tells a story. But because it listens to yours.You might wonder whether Kiss, Varun Grover’s directorial debut, stirs any of these deep, disquieting emotions, the kind cinema, at its best, can summon. But it largely doesn’t. The film feels too manufactured, too self-conscious in its construction to allow for real pathos. Emotion doesn’t land when every beat feels premeditated, every gesture aimed too directly at meaning. What we witness instead is the unmistakable imprint of a first-time filmmaker, or perhaps even an accomplished screenwriter, trying a little too hard to make a point. And so expectedly we’re given a provocatively high-concept premise: a young filmmaker, Sam (Adarsh Gourav) (mocked later in the film as “Kurosawa ka najayaz aulaad”) sits before a censor board, hoping for a clean certificate. But the gatekeepers, particularly Chahaun (Shubhrajyoti Barat) and Salil (Swanand Kirkire), take issue with a kissing scene. They can’t seem to stomach it. What follows is an absurd and strangely bureaucratic ritual: the three men watch and rewatch the scene, each trying to clock the exact duration of the kiss. One says 28 seconds. Another says over two minutes. Each time, the number shifts. No one can explain it. Time bends. The kiss stretches and contracts. Something about it escapes measurement, and with it, meaning.Also Read | Kiss movie review: Varun Grover’s ambitious directorial debut combats authoritarianism with empathy View this post on Instagram Shared post on TimeBut then, right at the midpoint, around the seven-minute mark, the film shifts. Almost subtly, it changes shape, as if slipping into another register altogether. What follows is, undeniably, an inventive turn: bold in structure, unconventional in its rhythm. And yet, the fingerprints of a first-time director remain visible. You sense the hesitation. The subtext doesn’t simmer, it’s spoken out loud. The dialogue carries weight it shouldn’t have to. Characters are held in place so tightly by the concept that they barely get a chance to breathe, let alone live. Still, that’s not to say Kiss lacks merit. While it may not strike with emotional force, it does provoke thought. There’s an intellectual current running beneath the unevenness. An intent that’s clear, even when the execution falters. This isn’t the kind of work that announces Grover’s mastery. But perhaps that’s precisely the point. Kiss doesn’t show us what Grover is capable of at his best. It shows us what he still manages to pull off on an uncertain day. On a day when most of mainstream Hindi cinema struggles to find either a spine or a spark.It’s to Grover’s credit that, even within the uneven contours of Kiss, he imagines a world that feels almost Imtiaz Ali-esque. A realm suspended beyond binaries, where right and wrong dissolve, where the mind’s machinery and the heart’s fragility blur into something more elemental. It is a world unmoored from ideological poles, where censors and creators, in some strange alchemy, find themselves facing the same screen, fighting the same battles. A place where rage gives way to warmth, where the noise of offense is overtaken by empathy. And no surprise, that place is a movie theatre. No wonder, at the outset, Sam asks, “How can an artiste explain why?” But that, in fact, is the very question cinema keeps circling back to. The interrogation has never been of what is shown, but why it is shown. The why is the wound. The why is the origin. Every frame holds a reckoning between the artiste and the world, between the fiction onscreen and the reality it refuses to escape. It is to Grover’s credit that, even on an off day, in an odd and imperfect film, he manages to articulate that. He reminds us that cinema is still where all our hopes collect. After all, life begins when the lights fade in a theatre.Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:Varun Grover