Ishkq in Paris

About the film

Ishkq in Paris (transl. Love in Paris) is a 2013 Indian Hindi-language romance film starring Preity Zinta, Rhehan Malliek and Isabelle Adjani, directed by Prem Raj, produced by Zinta and co-written by Raj and Zinta. Initially set for release on 21 September 2012, the film was postponed multiple times before finally being released on 24 May 2013.

Plot

The story starts with a narration of Paris and its symbolism of love. Marie Elise is the narrator who says you can be in love but never find love or a lover here in Paris. A Parisian reads a script of a play as follows: Ishkq is the name of a girl who was born in Paris (Preity Zinta) and doesn't believe in deep love. All she wants is no commitments in the relationship and wants to be free. She is a photographer and playwright. Akash Kapoor, Cash with an A (Rhehan Malliek), and his friend Karan, who comes to see him off, are seen running on the railway station because they might miss the last train to Paris when the narrator says that Akash doesn't know that he will regret it if he doesn't leave this train. Karan invites Akash to his wedding but Akash is not sure about going. Akash enters the train and meets a girl who understands Hindi. The girl is Ishkq. They flirt around and have wine on the train to Paris. Ishkq says that she was roaming in Rome for the weekend because she loves being served by men and Italian waiters, to be specific, and guesses if Akash is Gujarati. Akash introduces and says he is from Delhi, Funjabi (Punjabi), and moved to London a year ago. He missed his flight to London, so catching this train to Paris and next morning to London.

While leaving, Akash asks for spending time with him, but Ishkq denies, but she later agrees since he is also not interested in commitment and will never meet again or ask for an address, number, or email ID. Akash gives her a rose, and Ishkq asks him to meet at 7:55 pm sharp at the Eiffel Tower entrance. Ishkq surprises Akash by showing him the Eiffel Tower filled with lights, and she narrates how she met an Italian waiter and fell in love at first sight in Rome, but he is weak and started crying. She used to go every morning to his cafe for breakfast. When they roam around, they see couple kissing but he never kisses her, she hints that after hot kisses cold gelato is good. He gets her gelato but charges her 4 euros. Akash teases her that even her love will be charged by this Italian waiter and her love for being served by men. Seems that he is an agent working at London and lives on commission like the hero of movie Jery Mcquire played by Tom Cruise. Akash falls in love with her eyes and says anyone will forget if they see her eyes filled with love but again teases her last bf – Italian waiter. It was love in air or Paris's magic, both wanted the night to be beautiful. Chunky Pandey stops them running around, says he has everything like antiques in the world and gives him a fun dice and they go to disc have drinks and dance.

At midnight, they walk on streets and Ishkq says about her school time boyfriend and say pickup lines to each other. They also share evil break up lines and go for dinner where a dance girl approached Akash and asks them to visit next day. But she seems to read their mind and tells Ishkq will get married in few months but Ishkq never believes and leaves the restaurant but the physic lady says she will find her father soon. They throw dice and movie comes up and it's too late but they plan to make their own and enact few scenes. They go to park and Akash confesses that he never fell in love or shed a tear for anyone. Ishkq reveals that he had a snake charmer type boyfriend and she cried over him, because he said that she will never be happy and will be sad and lonely. Akash cried only when his parent divorced but his parents were happy that his tears were never seen. Ishkq says she fears loneliness and she will be left alone and not able to make others happy. Akash says the world is scared about this. Their loneliness spoke volumes and made them friends. It was next morning, they had coffee and Ishkq said she didn't like goodbye so asks Akash to leave first but asks him to wait for another surprise. They both agree they had the best night ever. Akash waits till he gets late and leaves. Next moment Ishkq arrives in the café with a gift but since he left she also leaves thinking t…

Production

The film marks a comeback for Preity Zinta.

The film was shot mainly in Europe, at very great expense. Much of the film was shot in France (mainly in Paris and Lyon), with some scenes shot in Prague. A few scenes were shot in India also.

Soundtrack

Music director duo Sajid–Wajid composed the songs for Ishkq in Paris. The soundtrack release date was announced on 15 September via Zinta's Twitter account. The songs are penned by Jalees Sherwani, Prasoon Joshi, Kumaar, Kausar Munir, Sophie Choudry and Priya Panchal.

Reception

Writing for Sify, Sonia Chopra gave the film an extremely positive review, praising the entirety of the cast, the cinematography and the dialogues and labelling it "great" and "irresistible, despite its flaws". Rachit Gupta of Filmfare gave the film 3/5 stars but did not have many positive things to say, calling the film a "flaky and uninteresting love story". Similarly, in The Times of India, Meena Iyer gave 2.5/5 stars, stating "the actress is good but there ends the show", while Gaurav Malani called the film not "bad", but "boring", which to him was worse. In Bollywood Hungama, Taran Adarsh gave it the same rating, praising the chemistry between the two leads as well as the visuals, but criticizing the screenplay, concluding that Ishkq in Paris was "decent fare". Writing for India Today, Vinayak Chakravorty found that despite similarities with other films, it managed to find some originality and that Isabelle Adjani's performance was impressive, but was disappointed by the direction, the lack of chemistry between the leads, Rhehan Malliek's lack of screen presence, the fact that Preity Zinta's performance is similar to many other roles she's done before and deemed the script "bad". while similarly in Mint, Nandini Ramnath concluded that "if the movie works at all", it was because of the short runtime and Preity Zinta's "contagious joy at being the cynosure of attention". In …

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