People age oddly in Fitoor.

A small Kashmiri boy with innocent eyes and a Saleem Sinai nose becomes a natural artist but, as if working with unreasonably heavy paintbrushes, emerges also a musclebound dimwit. A haughty young girl with a National Velvet self-confidence morphs into a red-haired waxwork unable to pronounce words that came so naturally in her youth. And an old opium addict, one of the most famous female parts in all Victorian literature, ages the most tragically: poor Tabu with abruptly heightening hysteria and increasingly weird eye-makeup, growing old like a Transylvanian raccoon.

Director Abhishek Kapoor might have had a fine idea on paper, given that Dickens’ Great Expectations is sufficiently Bollywood in its narrative — a vintage melodrama about star-crossed lovers, and romance impossible to snuff out — and he does well to make a visually lush film, with opulent production design and cinematographer Anay Goswami…