This May-December romance doesn't go beyond its springtime aesthetics

LOVE isn't just soft hues. It isn't perfect frames or choreographed steps or a production design that screams nostalgia.

- KARTIK BHARDWAJ

Netflix's Aap Jaisa Koi, however, is convinced that's all there is to it.

The May-December romance, starring R Madhavan and Fatima Sana Shaikh and helmed by Vivek Soni (Meenakshi Sundareshwar), operates in a magic dreamland where even a mosquito net can be an aesthetic. Where an intimate-chat app doesn't have ads, a 42-year-old virgin can get an early 30s woman and where Bengalis refuse ilish (at least initially). Ok, that's a nightmare.

The virgin in question is Shrirenu Tripathi (Madhavan), a Sanskrit adhyapak (teacher) in a Jamshedpur school. Shrirenu hasn't had it ever, courtesy of a curse by a girl in school after a failed proposal. Decades later, he lives with roommate and friend Deepak (Namit Das) and talks about his loneliness to a caged, single rat (There's a metaphor here, as straight as a road through a desert, so I will not get into that). Deepak introduces Shrirenu to an intimate-chat app called Aap Jaisa Koi ("AJK for short") and even when his idea of dirty talk is asking a girl if she had dinner, he still manages to get talking to one late through the night.