It does brilliantly at capturing life in Mumbai domestically, and also in an office environment. Visually, The Lunchbox excels on so many levels. The lunchbox system is one which people in western culture who have never visited India would not be familiar with and the film gives a wonderful introduction to it. The Lunchbox is a wonderful cultural study of modern day Mumbai. It has an overall feel of good atmosphere to it, but it is also deep and sensitive to the emotional hardships of life and love. Not only does the film follow paths not normally explored by other films in its genre, but it also keeps the viewer guessing right till the end and also beyond. It explores the lost art of penpalling in an original form and is slightly reminiscent of such films as The Shop Around The Corner and You’ve Got Mail, but only in the sense that the two lead characters are exchanging letters and in doing so, forming a relationship with each other. It avoids all the stereotypical elements of a love story which usually play a huge part in the predictability of such films. Just when it seems like the romance genre has nothing new left to offer, along comes a film like The Lunchbox. The two begin an exchange of letters through the lunches and find that this exchange is what makes the difference they have both been craving in their lives. Her meal finds Saajan Ferndandes (Irrfan Khan), a reclusive widower who is preparing for retirement. It is close to an impossibility, which is why it is so unusual when lonely wife and mother Ila’s (Nimrat Kaur) home cooked meal for her husband gets delivered to the wrong person. Mumbai’s lunchbox system has always had a reputation of efficiency with there being very little chance of a person being delivered the wrong lunch. The Lunchbox is tantalising, heart-warming and aesthetically pleasing with it’s wonderful visuals of Indian cuisine. While it is culturally significant to modern day India, the threads of romance laced through the film are rather old fashioned in a most welcomed way. The Lunchbox is exceptionally sweet and even though the story is quite simplistic, it accomplishes so much around this story of two lonely people who find each other in the most unusual fashion. It is a breath of fresh air into the masses of romance films which have crowded our cinemas in the past few years with overly stereotypical and predictable elements. The Lunchbox is a charming film which restores faith in the romance genre. Starring: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui Produced by Arun Rangachari, Anurag Kashyap and Guneet Monga Madman Films presents a film by Ritesh Batra Reviewed by Nicki Newton-Plater on July 21st, 2014 By Nicki Newton-Plater The Lunchbox – Film Review