(Reviewer's Note: The film was screened at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles)

Every year, when the AFI Fest comes around, I try my best to carve out a schedule that allows me to see as many films as possible, some of which are on my radar, some which are not. The Lunchbox was only mildly on my radar, after Sony Pictures Classics picked it up out of Cannes for a 2014 release, but, despite all of its acclaim, I wasn't sure if this would be up my alley or not. Thankfully, I gave this a shot last weekend, and was rather impressed by this endearing premise and superb performances by Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur.

I'll just put it out there: I'm not a huge fan of big-screen romances, because most follow the same sort of intrinsic playbook that brings us to the same conclusion as every other rom-com or rom-dram. While The Lunchbox is rooted in the same sort of sentimentality that has made Nicholas Sparks adaptations so big on this side of the pond, it is fueled by a terrifically unique conceit, centered on the amazingly efficient lunchbox delivery system in Mumbai, India, and the one mistake that brings two people together.

The film actually opens by showing the rather amazing process of how this delivery system works, as we follow the green lunchbox prepared by Ila (Nimrat Kaur), who hopes the special meal she made for her husband (Nakul Vaid) might actually cause him to notice her at home. However, the lunchbox ends up on the desk of Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Kahn), a dour, solitary man who has worked at an insurance agency for the past 35 years. When Ila realizes that her meal went to the wrong person, she writes a note to this mystery man, as they both begin to share their life stories through hand-written notes over lunch.

While the story gets a bit muddled in the third act, Ritesh Batra delivers in an incredibly impressive feature debut, showing the poise and confidence in his no-frills plot in the same way that made American filmmakers like Alexander Payne and Tom McCarthy so beloved by indie cinefiles. In fact, the film shares a lot of similiarities with Payne's fantastic 2002 drama About Schmidt, which starred Jack Nicholson as a man unsure of how to spend the rest of his life, after his wife passes away. Irrfan Kahn's Saajan Fernandes is very much in a similar situation, as we watch his routine and rather uneventful life unfold from day to day, without anyone to share it with after his wife's passing. However, much like Schmidt's wife's passing was a catalyst to jump-start his life again, the notes Saajan shares with Ila causes him to break out of his hardened shell a bit, as he opens up to the bubbly accountant Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) he is training before retirement.

Also, much like the films of Alexander Payne and Tom McCarthy, Batra gives us healthy portions of humor along the way as well, particularly from Ila's never-seen and often-heard upstairs neighbor Mrs. Deshpande (Bharati Achrekar), who doles out hilarious advice and wisdom to Ila, while passing ingredients for her lunches through a basket. We also get plenty of humor in the initially-icy relationship between Saajan and the eternally-optimistic Shaikh.

This is one of those films where, the more I think about it, the more I like it. There is just so much to enjoy here, from the outstanding performances by Irrfan Kahn, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, to Ritesh Batra's multi-layered storytelling, and so much in between.

There's a moment in the film when Ila confronts the delivery man, saying that her lunchbox is going to the wrong place. Her accusation is met with hilarious disdain, with the delivery man citing a Harvard study that only one lunchbox in 1 million goes astray, as he refuses to admit that a mistake has been made. That one in a million mistake brings two vastly different lives together in a refreshing way, without all the syrupy bullsh*t and heavy-handed scores used to hammer home the romance in 999,999 out of 1 million other films.

The Lunchbox is as authentic as they come, marking the debut of an immensely talented filmmaker that we'll all have to keep our eyes on in the years to come.