Lunch delivered to the wrong address sets off correspondence between complete strangers.

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To recapture the heart of her husband Rajeev, Ila makes him exquisite lunches that she has delivered to his office in Bombay. But by mistake, these lunches are served not to Rajeev, but to Sajaan, a bored public servant. A widower getting trying to get used to his impending retirement, Sajaan is a quiet and lonely man not much interested in others, until the delicious meals awaken both his soul and his palate. When Ila realizes she is not feeding her husband, she begins to place letters to Sajaan in the lunch container. He writes back, and their correspondence soon becomes personal, with both parties impatiently awaiting their next letter. When they finally meet, they realize that reality is more complicated than they imagined …

Anchored in Indian culture, this debut by Ritesh Batra (shown at the Semaine de la critique in Cannes), addresses with humor his nostalgia for a disappearing world, in which our society is losing touch with one another and where people can be lonely in the midst of overpopulation and the struggle for survival. He also focuses on the social inferiority of women, the absence of compensation for talent, fraud as a system of success, the failings of social security … The movie’s ending is open, with an optimistic message: “Sometimes the wrong train will get you to the right station.”