Hasee Toh Phasee (2014)
Many Hindi romances feature one member of a couple realising they’re marrying the wrong person on the day of the wedding itself. The couple have to reconcile their romance with their family obligations, which include constant references to money, whether for education or for weddings.
Meeta is another of Parineeti Chopra’s quirky offbeat roles. Here she plays a clever but awkward engineering geek whose older, much more glamorous sister, Karishma, is engaged to Nikhil (Sidharth Malhotra). However, Nikhil and Meeta become close friends, and it’s only at the last minute he realises what the audience already knows, that he’s in love with the wrong sister, even as Meeta’s behaviour becomes ever stranger. The film explores the idea that love is not always based on conventional ideas of beauty and desirability but on other emotional bonding, so the surprise is that the handsome Nikhil falls in love with the sister who does not conform to these norms.
Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (2013)
Loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, this romantic-action film is set against a background of armed feuds in rural Gujarat and centres on a couple from rival families who fall in love with each other. Ram (Ranveer Singh) wants peace, but when he and Leela (Deepika Padukone) elope, they are separated by their families. Later, with Ram and Leela installed as heads of their families, they try to bring about peace during riots that occurred during the Dussehra festival.
Apart from a 1941 Gujarati song, ‘Mor Bani Thanghat Kare’, he composed most of it. The festive songs are now played at events on those occasions, in particular the garba song ‘Nagada Sang Dol’, which is a favourite during the Navratri celebrations.
Lootera (2013)
The flick is a love story between Pakhi (Sonakshi Sinha) and Varun (Ranveer Singh). The first half of the film begins in 1953, where Varun is an archaeologist on Pakhi’s family’s considerable estates in West Bengal. They romance in the style of a heritage film – elegant clothes, houses and lifestyle – and are about to marry but he runs away. In the second part of the film, Varun is on the run but takes refuge in Pakhi’s house in the hills, where she is dying.
The film is based on the 1907 short story ‘The Last Leaf’ by O. Henry, in which the heroine knows she will die when the last leaf falls, so the hero paints and ties paper leaves on the tree until he can do so no more. The music by Amit Trivedi, including hits such as ‘Sawaar Loon’/‘I’ll Decorate My Heart’, evoke the 1950s.
Love Aaj Kal (2009)
The movie takes a very romantic view of love never changing, though ways of romancing are different. Jai (Saif Ali Khan) and Meera (Deepika Padukone) are in a happy relationship but break up for career reasons, with Jai staying in London, hoping to go to San Francisco, and Meera going to India. Jai becomes friends with an older Sikh, Veer Singh (Rishi Kapoor), who tells him that when he was young he would do anything for his love, Harleen, travelling by train just to see her, but getting beaten up by her family.
In the reenactments of this story, Saif plays the young Veer. Meera marries another man, but she and Jai will eventually come together.
Jab We Met (2007)
This romcom was much loved for superstar Kareena Kapoor’s depiction of a stereotypically feisty Punjabi girl, Geet Dhillon, who meets Aditya (Shahid Kapoor) on a train and forcefully persuades him to come to meet her family. Her incessant talking and optimism initially irritate Aditya, but he eventually falls in love with her. The trouble is that Geet is in love with someone else…
Veer-Zaara (2004)
In Veer-Zaara, one of a handful of Indian-Pakistani romances, Squadron Leader Veer Pratap Singh (Shah Rukh Khan) falls in love with Pakistani Zaara Hayat Khan (Preity Zinta), and they travel around Punjab. However, Zaara returns home to marry her fiancé. When Veer later learns she loves him, he leaves his job to go to Pakistan, where he gets imprisoned as a spy.
The film uses songs composed but never used by the late Madan Mohan, mostly sung by Lata Mangeshkar, which give a traditional feeling to the flick.
Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999)
This is the story of a half Italian, the wonderfully named Sameer Rossellini (Salman Khan), who comes to a posh palace in India where he falls in love with his teacher’s daughter Nandini (Aishwarya Rai). Their romance forms the first half of this film, but it is the second romance that is the truly moving one: Nandini has an arranged marriage to Vanraj (Ajay Devgan), who fell in love with her when he saw her singing ‘Nimbuda’. He does not sleep with her after marriage, when he realises she does not love him. He even takes her to ‘Italy’ (actually Hungary) to find Sameer, but on their travels she falls in love with her husband. This twist turns the seemingly transgressive story into a very conventional one, that of love developing after marriage rather than before.