Miloni and Rafi belong to different backgrounds yet they are similar in some ways. They both are living their lives for others. They are obedient pliable people who have followed whatever has been told to them. Miloni always acquiesces to her parent’s choices. She wears what her family thinks looks good on her. When she is asked about her favourite color, she is unable to answer. Rafi, too, is living for his family. He is working hard to pay the debt of his house in his village. He was the one who bore all the expenses of his sisters’ wedding. He cannot say no to his grandmother’s wishes. At the post office when he sends the money order, the lady at the counter also advises him to sometimes keep some money for himself instead of sending it all away. Apne liye bhi rakha karo, Rafi Bhai. In a wonderful scene, while chatting with his friends, he says he told his grandmother, “Dekh Daadi,” after which his friend starts mocking his assertiveness and then Rafi corrects that he said, “Dekhiye Daadi.” Dekh becomes dekhiye. Even in her absence, he feels shy about being authoritative. When he finishes his letter, he signs it off as ‘aapka accha vala bachcha‘. At one stage, he even tells his grandmother that he has to go pee when he is at the restaurant. He does do anything without telling her.

Miloni and Rafi’s obedience, perhaps, will soon turn into rebellion if they took their relationship to the next level. They belong to different religions and social classes. She is a Hindu. He is a Muslim. She belongs to an upper-class family. He is struggling to make ends meet. Like it happened in the films of the seventies and the eighties, their differences will eventually give rise to opposition from their family members. People already taunt Rafi and make offensive comments for choosing a girl who is different from him in every way. He is a gulab jamun while she is a rasgulla. Photograph does not show us their future and it cleverly ends with Miloni and Rafi chatting outside a cinema hall when they go for a movie. Rafi says that the stories of all the movies are usually the same; their life will soon turn into a movie as well, but the film is primarily focused on building their unlikely relationship.

One interesting thing that is clearly visible throughout the film is the repeated focus on the feet shot of the characters. This is most evident in the case of Miloni. Whenever she seems to be nervous, there are shots of her twitching her feet. It is hard to discern the exact meaning of these feet shots; it can be only be conjectured. As Miloni does not articulate her thoughts and prefers to be silent, the film uses these feet shots to indicate her nervous state. When she is watching a film with Rafi, a rat jumps across her feet making her squirm. When she speaks to Rampyaari (Geetanjali Kulkarni), Miloni asks about her payal as she also got a pair from Rafi’s grandmother.

The world of Photograph is not different from the one in The Lunchbox. To start with, the title of the two films is in English. Old-school elements, such as letters and pictures, form the crux of the stories in them. The two films are uniquely Bombay films. Loneliness is a supporting character of its own in the two films. Chance encounters lead to unlikely friendships and undefined relationships in both of them. An accidental delivery of a lunchbox leads to an epistolary romance between Ila (Nimrat Kaur) and Saajan (Irrfan Khan) in The Lunchbox. Kabhi kabhi galat train bhi sahi jagah pahuncha deti hai. A chance encounter at the Gateway of India leads to a pictorial romance between Rafi and Miloni.