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Set in a youthful, hip, modern India (be prepared for men in leather pants), Farhan Akhtar’s film follows three best friends and recent college graduates as they lose and find love. It’s an unsettling blend of cutting-edge cool and old-school Bollywood genre conventions: a dance number set in a nightclub is edited like an MTV Europe video and then followed by the obligatory trip abroad (Australia this time). This uneasy compromise is redeemed in part by performances from Indian superstar Aamir Khan and Priety Zinta as the couple so wrong for each other it must be right and from Akshaye Khanna as the unflappably cool artist Sid. At first liberal in its family politics and attitudes toward love, Dil Chahta Hai eventually falls back on traditional values. Akhtar, who also wrote the screenplay, is shooting for a contemporary film about twentysomethings that twentysomethings might want to watch, but, stuck in the trappings of the genre, he misses his mark. In Hindi with English subtitles. (185 minutes) At the Museum of Fine Arts next Thursday, December 4, and also next Saturday, December 6.
BY BROOKE HOLGERSON
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