Once during an interview Francis Ford Coppola was asked why it took so long for Kay to leave Michael Corleone in the Godfather series. The writer-director, citing his own life, had replied that wives tend to believe their husbands when they say they would let go of their obsession for their jobs after a certain point. It’s only later they realise that certain point never comes.

Whether you are a mafia don or a filmmaker or a painter like Emraan Hashmi is in Tum Mile, there is that relationship between the art and the artist that sometimes consumes all other relationships. As a wife or a girlfriend of that artist, all you can do is wait and watch or walk out.

This friction is the crux of Kunal Deshmukh’s Tum Mile, even though the posters and promos would tell you otherwise. It’s about Akshay (Emraan) and Sanjana (Soha) living in — with each other, but with very different concerns. She says: “Pay the electricity bills”. He says: “I haven’t made a painting in three months.”

That she is also his muse compounds matters. She wants to talk out their differences but he places her on the bed and starts splashing colours on the canvas. He smiles having found the inspiration for his new painting even as tears keep rolling down her face and Pritam’s haunting Dil ibadat kar raha hai dhadkanein meri sun... plays along in the background.

Tum Mile could have been such a sensitive and heartfelt relationship film but Kunal obviously wants to do much more. Like most Bhatt productions, this one too desperately seeks a unique marketing point. And here it is the Mumbai floods of 2005.

Unlike Kunal’s last film Jannat, where cricket merged seamlessly with the love story, all the water here does is drown the romance. Tum Mile ends up becoming a tale of two films, one having very little to do with the other.

Like doomsday director Roland Emmerich does in all his movies, something even Spielberg’s War of the Worlds followed, a disaster film has certain genre rules. You don’t sit and dwell on the past till the last reel and tune into the action for just a few minutes of the movie.

When Tum Mile starts with the ominous forecast at the Met office and then the raindrops start falling on the heads of Akshay and Sanjana — meeting six years after they broke up — you expect a quick flashback to show jab they met and kab they split.

But you soon realise that the film is the flashback and the flood an excuse to tell that story. There’s just a couple of action/stunt set pieces in the entire film, one where the bus topples on the road and two when a wall breaks and a narrow corridor fills up with water. Surely for disaster movie buffs, Tum Mile is going to be one big dampener.

The love story, on the other hand, overstays its welcome and can easily be trimmed by half an hour. The second song in Half Two, meri jaan needs to go. You can’t say the same about the rest of the tracks, though, as Pritam’s soundtrack — Tum mile, Dil ibadat and Tu haqeeqat — often keeps the film ticking.

Also, the lead pair is in good form. Emraan has always been a good actor, just that his extra-curricular activities take centrestage once too often. Like Gangster, this is a more nuanced performance, with the right amounts of thehraav and intensity.

But the real revelation is Soha Ali Khan. Looking more beautiful than she has ever looked, the actress carries off a difficult part with effortless ease. Perfect pauses, silent sighs... Soha in Tum Mile will stir up your best memories of mother Sharmila Tagore.

Tum Mile, at 140 long minutes, is a very uneven watch. You can see the amount of love and care that’s gone into every frame of the film but how you wish nature had not been called in as the third umpire between him and her.