Barfi!

Barfi! (2012) is an Indian romantic comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Anurag Basu set the story in 1970s Darjeeling — mist, trams, monsoon rain — and put a deaf-mute young man named Barfi at the centre of it. Ranbir Kapoor plays him almost entirely through movement and expression, and it is among the finest physical performances in Hindi cinema of the decade.

Barfi falls for Shruti, who is already promised to someone else. Then comes Jhilmil — a young woman with autism, played by Priyanka Chopra — and the three of them form a triangle with no villains, only people who can't quite give each other what the other needs.

Basu shot the film in the idiom of silent comedy: pratfalls, mime, music doing the work of dialogue. It was India's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film that year. Bolly wood productions rarely manage this mix — warm without being saccharine, funny without deflating the grief. Stream Barfi! (2012) online on iFILM.