‘Love, Sitara’ movie review: Pre-wedding blues with Sobhita Dhulipala

A nonetheless from ‘Love, Sitara’
| Photograph Credit score: Particular Association

Love, Sitara begins with a nod to Anna Karenina: “All completely satisfied households are alike; every sad household is sad in its personal means,” says Sitara (Sobhita Dhulipala). Not like Leo Tolstoy’s nice novel — whose opening line these phrases are — the writing in Vandana Kataria’s movie isn’t as quotable, although it tries exhausting. You may assemble a slim quantity of pithy self-help slogans from Abbas and Hussain Dalal’s dialogue: “Happiness lies in honesty.” “Dysfunction means they’re making an effort.” “I’ll repair myself, earlier than I can repair my relationships.” 

Sitara, or Tara, and Arjun (Rajeev Siddhartha), have been relationship turbulently for some years. They’re each urbane, enticing, career-minded: she’s an inside designer of some acclaim; he’s a chef who’s landed a spot in Singapore. When Tara is knowledgeable by her physician that she’s pregnant —a shock analysis — she withholds this reality from Arjun whereas proffering her hand in marriage. Each households convene in Kerala, on the home of Tara’s maternal grandmother, the place a muhurat is fastened over recent banana fritters and 2 States-style comedy.

Fortunately, the comedy is short-lived. Early on, a good friend remarks, with some shock, the way it’s so not like Tara to heat as much as the thought of marriage. We study that Arjun had proposed to her three years in the past, however she turned him down. Her being pregnant, then, has prompted this turn-around, however how precisely? As deceptions and dishonesties emerge — together with a attainable fissure in her mum or dad’s marriage — Tara finds herself in a deep emotional quandary. It’s an attention-grabbing predicament to drop Dhulipala in, since she performs one other Tara, a talented marriage ceremony planner who sees by means of the lies of others, within the Prime Video sequence Made in Heaven. 

An acclaimed manufacturing designer, Kataria made her directorial debut with Noblemen (2019), a fancy exploration of bullying and poisonous masculinity in a boarding college. Love, Sitara turns its concentrate on feminine expertise; Sonali Kulkarni takes a pivotal function in Sonia Bahl’s screenplay, and veteran theatre actor B. Jayashree is Tara’s sweetly eccentric Amumma. But, in some way, the brand new movie doesn’t have the identical psychological depth as Kataria’s earlier work. Although it goals for real messiness, it additionally appears to carry again. 

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The most important hitch is the writing, which tacks indiscriminately between English and Hindi (with sprinklings of Malayalam). The household drama feels extra organized than life-like: everybody has the proper repartee for the proper state of affairs (“A mistake can wreck a thousand lives”; “hearts, like monuments, needs to be constructed of stone”). A late flare-up abounds in TV serial weepiness, full with thunderclaps and lashings of rain. The setting of the Kerala countryside isn’t put to efficient use; among the character sketches veer on caricature, just like the gabby housemaid with the alcoholic husband.

So significantly better is the penultimate scene, with Tara and Arjun arguing like a plausible couple with some miles behind them. If I might solely put Made in Heaven’s Tara Khanna out of my thoughts, I’d have maybe appreciated Dhulipala’s efficiency higher. Ikhlaque Khan, who performs Arjun’s retired armyman father, obsessive about desh and obligation, is without doubt one of the nice sitters in trendy Hindi cinema. My favorite character, although, is Tara’s greatest good friend Anjali (Tamara D’Souza), an award-winning photojournalist who covers human rights points, and who turns up along with her digicam to shoot the pre-wedding celebrations. A good facet hustle, all stated. 

Love, Sitara is presently streaming on ZEE5