Chand Mera Dil, directed by Vivek Soni and starring Ananya Panday and Lakshya, releases on 22 May as a Dharma Productions offering that refuses to dress love in comfortable clothes. Rated 4 out of 5, this romance-drama is one of the more emotionally honest Hindi films of the year — a story about how young love, when colliding with adult reality, can quietly devastate the people inside it.

What the Film Is About

The film follows Aarav and Chandni, two young lovers whose relationship begins in the giddy warmth of college romance and gradually buckles under the weight of ambitions, family obligations and the hard choices that adulthood demands. What starts as innocent, breathless infatuation evolves into something far more complicated — a journey through sacrifice, heartbreak and the slow, painful redefinition of what love actually means. Vivek Soni does not offer easy resolutions; the film sits with its discomfort and earns its emotional payoff.

Performances

Ananya Panday delivers what is arguably the strongest work of her career as Chandni. She brings a rawness and vulnerability to the role that feels genuinely unguarded — the quiet emotional collapses, the flickers of hope and the internal conflict of a young woman torn between love and self-preservation all register with striking authenticity. Chandni is flawed and fully human, and Panday never softens her edges to make her more palatable.

Lakshya matches her beat for beat as Aarav, reinforcing his standing as one of the most compelling young actors working in Hindi cinema today. He traces the full arc of his character — from the open-hearted recklessness of first love to the heavy, hollow quality of a man changed by circumstance — with a precision that lingers. His emotionally intense sequences are the film's most haunting.

Together, the two leads generate a chemistry that feels lived-in rather than performed. Their romance moves from awkward college sweetness to the exhausted silences of a relationship under pressure, and the audience travels every step with them — rooting, wincing and ultimately aching.

Direction and Writing

Vivek Soni, whose earlier work includes Meenakshi Sundareshwar and Aap Jaisa Koi, again demonstrates his instinct for quiet emotional storytelling. He steers away from melodrama, preferring the texture of real moments — a hesitation, an unfinished sentence, an avoided glance. The film carries a consistent undertow of sadness that never tips into self-pity. The screenplay, written by Akshat Ghildial, Tushar Paranjape and Vivek Soni, favours conversational dialogue that lands because it sounds like something people actually say, not something written to provoke applause.

Music

The soundtrack functions as an emotional architecture for the film rather than a commercial add-on. The title track, the love anthem Aitbaar and the delicate Khasiyat each carry narrative weight, amplifying both the romance and the grief at precisely the right moments. Shreya Ghoshal's contributions to the album are particularly affecting — her voice introduces an aching emptiness that mirrors the film's emotional register throughout.

What Holds It Back

The film's primary weakness lies in pacing. Several sequences in the middle act stretch beyond their natural endpoint, and the cumulative emotional heaviness occasionally tips into repetition. A sharper edit — particularly in the second half — could have made the film's most devastating moments hit harder by giving the audience room to breathe between them.

Final Verdict

Produced by Hiroo Johar, Karan Johar, Adar Poonawalla, Apoorva Mehta, Somen Mishra and Marijke de Souza, Chand Mera Dil is not a fairytale. It is messy, painful and emotionally exhausting in the way that real love sometimes is — and that is precisely what makes it worth watching. Rating: 4/5.