STORY: Ved (Ranbir) and Tara (Deepika) meet each other with fake identities and take a week-long vacation in Corsica. Back in India though, it’s a different story.

REVIEW: If you watch Imtiaz Ali’s new film assuming that Deepika-Ranbir have unfinished business, you will forgive Tamasha its indulgence. The writer-director obviously knew he was dangling a carrot in front of these two Bollywood exes whose unrequited love has been gossip-column fodder for years now. And, they probably decided (this is an assumption) that if they hook up on screen once again, perhaps they could reach a closure.

The philosophy of the film is simple. If you conform in life, you will exist. However, if you indulge, even from time to time, you can actually live.

Armed with this life lesson, cute kid Ved from Shimla, who hates math and loves spinning yarns, keeps taking off on flights of fantasy. His first grown up adventure is an incognito trip to Corsica. He bumps into Tara, a beautiful Indian girl, on that breathtaking island and both of them promise they will not ask each other any questions, will not have sex and will go their separate ways, once this vacation ends. But of course, Cupid has other plans.

Back in India, Tara pines for Ved. Four years after that chance meeting, she is still drawn to that enigmatic ‘free bird’ who she met on an island.

He, on the other hand, hasn’t even had time to let his real feelings surface. His humdrum existence, as a project manager in a high-tech Delhi firm, has him feeling stifled in a tie and pitching bids he doesn’t believe in.

The clandestine lovers from France rekindle their affair in India. But when Ved proposes, Tara retorts that she loved the free-spirited man she met on vacation, not this mechanised robot. From there on the film meanders.

Like the protagonists, all of us know what it is to be tied down and not do what our hearts long. But the route Tamasha takes is long-winded and plain boring at times.

Deepika and Ranbir convey their angst and passion so convincingly that you’re hooked. Except for the curiosity about them, the rest of the drama is `oh,never-mind’.

Matargashti and Heer toh badi sad hai, two of Rahman’s songs, are magical even as standalone numbers.