Raincoat is a 2004 Indian romantic drama film directed by Rituparno Ghosh, and starring Ajay Devgn and Aishwarya Rai.

Manoj, ashamed, tells Alok to forget the letter and that he will go out the next day and ask for money personally.

On his journey, Manoj manages to collect 12,000 rupees before stopping at the home of his lost love, Neerja.

She brings the light and shows her face, free of bruises or black eyes, and assures him that her husband really loves her.

She never opens the door for fear of burglars in her dangerous town coming to loot her wealthy home.

She says her husband is in Japan on business and asked her to come along but she refused because of a fear of being locked in a bathroom and not knowing English.

Another flashback reveals that, although very sick from a fever, Manoj had an outburst about Neerja's engagement, demanding it be broken off.

Neerja asks about her appearance and her knowledge, and when Manoj tells her she's pretty and fluent in English, she becomes jealous.

Very alarmed, Manoj gives the landlord the 12,000 rupees he had collected to pay three months' rent and makes the man promise not to throw her out immediately.

He eventually asks to wash his hands after eating, and, once again, she refuses him to see the rest of the house and goes to get him a finger bowl.

Before Manoj goes to sleep that night, Sheela comes into his room to give him an envelope she said she found in the pocket of the raincoat.

Famous classical singer Shubha Mudgal lends her voice for the title track.

[3] Rediff cited "Some films attempt to showcase a series of wonderful moments and tend to go overboard.

For someone heralded as the most beautiful woman in the world, Aishwarya Rai looks terrifyingly depressing in the film.

Though the effort to sound rustic shows, the restraint in her dialogue delivery and performance is commendable.

[4] The Hindu stated "Raincoat... essentially a chamber piece, it weaves a narrative with just two characters in most of the frames.

Raincoat can easily be Aishwarya Rai's best performance, and as Neerja, the former beauty queen appears to have shed her inhibitions about looking unglamorous.

[5] Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama said "On the whole, Raincoat will appeal to a handful of critics and connoisseurs of art house cinema who'll heap lavish praises/lustrous words, but from the box-office point of view, Raincoat will face stormy weather at the ticket window".

Melancholic, rainy afternoon drama, almost entirely set in a single house, features meaty roles for two of Indian cinema's biggest stars, Aishwarya Rai and Ajay Devgan, in very different guises from their usual Bollywood ones.

Though pic is unlikely to score big locally when it goes out in August against more commercial heavy-hitters like Swades and The Rising, Raincoat could build a solid rep at fests, with some pickups by specialized webs and niche distribs.

As in Ghosh's previous pic, "Chokher Bali: A Passion Play" (2003), Rai reveals herself as a considerable actress given the right script and direction, far from the comic-romantic roles in most of her Bollywood productions.

Shunning her usual immaculate makeup and duds, and looking more like a broken, malfunctioning doll, she makes Niru a mixture of child and temptress/charmer, driven by capricious moods and clearly unhappy inside.

It's the showier of the two perfs, but Devgan, in ultra low-key mode, is equally impressive, especially in the latter stages as his great love for the woman he once knew reveals itself in an act of charity".