Beautifully shot and aided by an evocative background score, ‘Dhobi Ghat’ is occasionally indulgent and moves at a glacial pace. Yet Rao creates some endearing characters, and embraces Mumbai despite its dichotomies. The result is a film that slowly grows on you.

A strangely uneven film. Its beginning feels amateurishly put together ; as it heads onwards, though, it finds an easy, flowing rhythm with just the occasional stutter.

Dhobi Ghat is a middling debut, watchable due to its nuances but simply not interesting enough to recommend. Yet Rao seems assured of her craft, and worth looking out for in the future.

A lyrical ode to the modern malady — metro-eccentricity — Dhobi Ghat is intelligent and artistic cinema.

This film is first-rate tribute; it’s visceral, I realise — both clichés for compliments. Nothing more appropriate comes to mind.

If you are willing to have patience, Dhobi Ghat comes together nicely. It has a poetry and melancholy that stays with you. I recommend that you give it a shot.

For entertainment or emotional stimulation look elsewhere. There’s every reason you can miss this one. Unless you like to believe you’re among the intelligentsia.

On the whole, Dhobi Ghat is a gentry film for a very select audience which likes festival films. It will have to rely on Aamir Khan’s presence in its cast and the Republic Day holiday mid-week to take its collections to a somewhat respectable level.

DHOBI GHAT is surely a different and brave step in Indian cinema; but not exactly a pleasing one.

Dhobi Ghat is meant for Mumbai lovers. For good and bad, Mumbai is what it is: home to millions who adore the city which is covered beautifully by Kiran Rao.