From the get-go, it’s obvious that Monica O My Darling is Vasan Bala’s nod to his favourite noir films, from ’70s Hindi cinema to Hollywood. If the title is borrowed from one of R D Burman’s biggest chartbusters, Huma Qureshi’s opening scene reminds you of Helen’s dance numbers that were a staple in the decade.

And with that begins the 129-minute enjoyable game of spot-the-reference in the Rajkummar Rao, Qureshi and Radhika Apte-led noir murder mystery — from Nasir Hussain written on a pick-up tempo, to the name board of a building having Guru Dutt, Sriram Raghavan and Anurag Kashyap, among others, listed as residents.

Bala doesn’t stop there with his meta references. The clever dialogues too have caught the audience’s attention. “The dialogues have been placed cannily in scenes, and have references to various Bollywood films as a tribute to multiple noir filmmakers,” says the director, a follower of Raghavan’s school of cinema.

He is happy that the dialogues — a hat-tip to various filmmakers, including Vishal Bhardwaj and Ram Gopal Varma — are being enjoyed by viewers. “I didn’t think of the dialogues as punches. It started off as a fun exercise. The line ‘Main bhi dheel dene wali nahin hoon re, Chandu’ is a nod to Ramu’s Company [2002], and ‘Bol Monica, jaan meri’ to Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool [2004]. After a while, it snowballed into many VHS, DVD cinema memories, and blended into the language of the characters. I am glad they gelled well with the characters who said them.”

Vishal Bhardwaj, Vasan Bala and Ram Gopal Varma