Love, Sitara opens with a Kerala marriage ceremony, with Sobhita Dhulipala’s Tara in the course of an unabashed introduction to her dysfunctional household. Outwardly portraying a delusionally completely happy image of an excellent bunch, Tara’s household has perfected the artwork of casually masking the reality. It’s a typical poisonous Indian household that runs on hypocrisy and harbours a number of hushed secrets and techniques, sufficient to tear it aside.
Tara is not precisely main an ideal sticking-to-the-plan life herself, although. Within the second scene itself we discover her panicking in a clinic after discovering out that she is pregnant, appalled on the discovery that contraception works solely 95 % of the time. Flooded with feelings, she makes an impromptu marriage proposal to her chef boyfriend, Arjun (Rajeev Siddhartha), with whom she shares a turbulent romantic historical past – conveniently hiding the reality about her being pregnant. The couple decides to have their marriage ceremony at Tara’s childhood dwelling in Kerala the identical month. Thus begins a sophisticated circus of secrets and techniques, sleuthing, and moulding truths.
The flawed romance right here is not simply restricted to the lead pair. Each romantic relationship within the movie is flawed. The home helps are wedded off to drunkards and favorite aunts are wrapped in illicit affairs with married males. The movie presents a disturbing array of inappropriate {couples}, laying naked the unhappy actuality of lots of Indian marriages.
Love, Sitara is a satirical mockery of romantic relationships. It exposes the faults straightaway, with out beating across the bush a lot. The movie excels in exposing the hypocrisy that pervades society, the place individuals publicly condemn others for the exact same secrets and techniques they cover themselves. With unflinching honesty, Love, Sitara reveals the issues and double requirements that always underline our most intimate connections.
What I significantly preferred was director Vandana Kataria’s try at a balanced portrayal of traditionalism and modernity. It is among the few current movies the place the 2 co-exist and level out the very awkwardness of this paradoxical existence. It would not justify the fashionable hookup tradition however questions the normal marriage arrange, as nicely. The movie additionally steers clear from a stereotypical illustration of Malayali households in North Indian cinema, the place you see houses decreased to prolonged temples with rooms.
As for performances, Dhulipala has executed an honest job at portraying a flawed, tousled, and egocentric lady who can’t get her priorities straight. Tara is not written in a approach that’ll transfer you or make you’re feeling sorry for her and her self-invited troubles, however is a pleasant break from the stereotypical extremes of girls represented on display screen. You will not really feel a lot sympathy for her, however that is maybe the entire level.
Siddhartha and Virginia Rodrigues, nevertheless, give the very best performances of all of them. The 2 actors carry a relaxing presence to the in any other case chaotic lives round them. Their poise, versus the hypocrites round them, is pleasant and pleasant. Siddhartha’s cooking sequences are cathartic, and Rodrigues’ composure in how she handles issues is a spotlight. Regardless that the screenplay would not supply a lot room to the 2 for a multi-layered efficiency, they shine of their roles.
Love, Sitara intends nicely and begins sturdy, however considerably lacks in its total execution. The themes of hypocrisy, facade, and infidelity are all touched upon, however the movie skirts across the impression these may need on characters and story. Although there are a couple of highly effective scenes, together with the one the place Rodrigues’ character has a nervous breakdown after a disturbing revelation, the momentum retains ebbing away over time.
The eating desk conversations are significantly exhausting to look at. The laughter feels pressured and jokes miss the touchdown. They really feel extra just like the early morning periods of laughter yoga than a normal household dinner. Regardless that the movie banks on households’ pretentiousness, these faux bursts of laughter grow to be an excessive amount of to take.
Love, Sitara has all of the substances of a great movie on paper, with an ideal flavour of the normal and the fashionable and the way each stay deeply flawed, but it surely lacks a completion. It finally ends up feeling like a great first draft for a movie, which has the potential of translating into to one thing more difficult and complicated, however is launched in a rush with its half-cooked concepts, as an alternative. The movie conveniently skips on how ugly infidelity can get. Whereas I perceive that Kataria may need wished to maintain the movie from being too heavy or seeming like ethical lesson on monogamy, the narrative however may have been extra compelling if it reckoned with the realities of the connection points it brings up.
A few of the tropes appear ill-fitted and act as pointless fillers for the storyline, scattered throughout the movie for ornamental functions. As an example, Arjun’s dad, a retired army officer, is little greater than prop, who was added to the movie simply as one other instance of a dysfunctional relationship. He’s there simply to scorn, give disenchanted seems to his son, and put on a pretentious badge of superiority. The movie may have, actually, executed nicely with out him, or at the very least given him a couple of extra significant scenes to justify his presence.
Contrarily, a number of the character tropes have been fantastic of their little presence however closely underutilized. B Jayashree, for example, performs Tara’s savage grandmother. She is unapologetically herself, loves scanning although newspapers for humorous obituaries, and is aware of when to place her foot down. Jayashree is a pleasure to look at in every of her scenes. Nevertheless, despite the fact that her character appears necessary at first, she quickly takes a backseat unexpectedly; as if the director forgot about her.
Regardless of its shortcomings, nevertheless, Love, Sitara is an honest tackle familial dysfunction in Indian households, that successfully contrasts old-school and trendy relationships, whereas by no means favouring one over the opposite. It is a movie that exhibits a mirror to the hypocritical requirements of society, which bemoans the unstable, relationship-hopping tradition of younger individuals, and but has been conveniently accommodating inappropriate relationships, if stored a secret. It exposes how the lustful fallacies plaguing people have been nicely veneered beneath the masks of idealism.
If solely the movie did not draw back from taking up its material with a bit of extra grit, it could have probably made it to the 12 months’s favourites listing of lots of cinephiles, together with me. Sadly, that is not the case. Whereas Love, Sitara won’t be nearly as good because it may have been, it’s an trustworthy try at portraying the evolving dimensions of affection and relationships, even when it would not scratch beneath the floor.
Score: 6/10