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Genres: Drama Rating: 3/5 Censor: UA Duration: 93 min. Studio / Presenter: Amazon, Everest Entertainment, films Producer(s):  Mehul Shah, Aditya Rathi, Gayatri Patil Writer, Director: Aditya Rathi, Gayatri Patil Associate Producer: Dr Ghansham Rathi Cast: Neena Kulkarni, Vikas Hande, Amita Khopkar, Sameer Dharmadhikari DOP: Kedar Phadke Editor: Vijay Sarode Movie Review by: Ulhas Shirke

Every talented artiste is in search of a role to give his or her best. Age does no matter. What matters the most, is the character you are offered and its importance in the script. Versatile Marathi and Hindi film actress Neena Kulkarni has found one such opportunity to prove her mettle through recently released Marathi film ‘Photo Prem’ on Amazon Prime.

Produced by a team of Mehul Shah,  Aditya Rathi and Gayatri Patil and directed by the debutante director duo Aditya Rathi and Gayatri Patil, this 93 minutes length film features the main character of Mai a middle aged married woman who is camera shy and avoids facing camera directly even during her daughter’s marriage. After her daughter’s marriage, Mai becomes lonely at home, as her husband keeps spending his time after office with his friends and their parties. Except for watching television serials during the day and chatting with her domestic help Mai has no other work to keep herself occupied.

One day she attends a funeral of a woman (wife of her husband’s friend). She notices a problem faced in their family, where search is on for the deceased woman’s photograph, to be submitted to a newspaper Obituary column. In the absence of her photo, the news with the photo cannot appear in newspaper. This particular happening makes Mai feel uncomfortable and she keeps on thinking as to what would happen in her case and how people will remember her, in absence of her proper Solo Photo. How she deals with this situation is what the film’s screenplay is all about.

There is no doubt that some of the incidences are humour filled but due to limited content, the directors were not able to expand the screenplay with more interesting happenings, except for the climax, which is good. Nevertheless, actress Neena Kulkarni has found a lifetime lead role in this film and she has given full justice to her emotion filled character. Her husband and daughter are just namesake in this film. Instead, scope is given to the domestic help played by Chaitrali Rode, with some support coming from Amita Khopkar as Akka her relative, Pro Photographer Sameer Dharmadhikari and few others. Kaushal Inamdar‘s music and Kedar Phadke’s cinematography are the other plus points of this film.