The tiffin delivery service in Mumbai is famous for its accuracy. The Indian film The Lunchbox (2013) starts with a misdelivered tiffin and unfolds from there.
Ila is a housewife in an unhappy marriage. That first misdelivered tiffin is filled with food she hopes will make her husband fall in love with her again. It arrives at the desk of Saajan Fernandes, a lonely widower facing retirement. He’s supposed to be training in his eager young replacement, but he’s clearly reluctant to do so.
Ila quickly figures out that whoever enjoyed her special lunch was not her husband, so she sends the next lunch with a note. She receives a terse reply but continues to send lunches and notes rather than correcting the delivery service. Saajan also ignores the fact that his lunches are the result of a mistake (after all, Ila’s cooking is better than that of the restaurant that was supplying his meals). Instead, he sends the empty tiffin back with responses to Ila’s notes. Their correspondence becomes increasingly intimate.
I’m not fond of stories about affairs. I hated both The Bridges of Madison County and The English Patient. But The Lunchbox is a different story, in part because Ila’s husband is so horrible, and in part because… well, you’ll just have to watch the movie. I don’t want to spoil it for you.
The story and the characters are reasons enough to watch this film, but the food is what really won me over when I first saw it. I’m a sucker for a good food movie, and this is an excellent one. You can practically smell Ila’s cooking. Just watch this trailer.
The Lunchbox is available through Amazon, from Netflix (as a disk only), through YouTube Movies, and possibly at your local library. Make reservations at an Indian restaurant and then settle down to watch the movie just before you go. Mmmmmmm….