Mar 03, 2026 10:00am IST
‘Why Should Romance Belong Only To The Young?’: Saurabh Shukla And Pankaj Kapur On The Lack Of Mature Rom-Coms (EXCLUSIVE)
While genre cycles and box office trends continue to dominate industry conversations, romance remains a constant. Yet stories centred on older couples navigating love, crisis and rediscovery have become increasingly rare. With “Jab Khuli Kitaab”, director Saurabh Shukla and actor Pankaj Kapur, alongside Dimple Kapadia, attempt to bring that focus back. Shukla and Kapur spoke to Variety India exclusively about the same.
When asked whether mature romantic dramas have diminished, Shukla doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, we have reduced them a lot,” he says. But he quickly adds nuance. “Look, I don’t think I can analyze that. Because many of our mainstream heroes are not young either. If you are talking about mature stories, the younger generation finds youth aspirational. If the story is about young people, then identification happens easily. That might be the reason.”
At the same time, he pushes back against a deeply embedded assumption. “Otherwise, this idea that older people are not having fun, that notion should end. I think the amount of fun older people have is not funny at all,” he says with emphasis.
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For Shukla, the creative impulse is rarely age-driven. “From a maker’s point of view, I don’t think any maker thinks about age. I think it is more of a marketing thought, can we replace older characters with a younger couple? That’s a different matter altogether.” Then he frames the central provocation of the film in one line: “Why should romance belong only to the young?”
Kapur approaches the subject from the standpoint of writing and truth. “At least in the kind of story he has written, or if any writer writes about any age group, there is a truth to it, a rootedness,” he says. “The things shown in it relate to life, the life we live daily.”
He acknowledges the common reaction such films often receive. “Maybe many people think, ‘In this age group, where do we do such things?’ But that is not entirely true.” Hindi cinema, he points out, has addressed older relationships before. “In our film history, some films have been made about older men and women. There have been filmmakers who addressed such subjects. I can’t recall all the names right now, but many have worked in this age group.”
The absence, he suggests, is more about phases than impossibility. “Yes, for some time, people haven’t thought of such films. But everyone has their own take. They conceive the story from their angle and direct it in their own way.”
In “Jab Khuli Kitaab”, that angle is both intimate and dramatic. A seemingly small confession ripples outward, unsettling not just a marriage but the family ecosystem around it. “In this film, he has given a different angle, slightly unusual, but very dramatic and very entertaining,” Kapur says. “It shows how a small incident can shake an entire family structure, not necessarily break it, but bring change. I think that’s a great piece of drama.”
“Jab Khuli Kitaab” is set to release on Z5 on March 6, 2025.
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