One brood, three generations, 4 girls and the lads of their difficult lives 0ccupy the core of Love, Sitara, a movie peppered with the acquainted tics of a dysfunctional household drama. Does that make it a trite affair? Not fairly.
The Zee5 movie directed by Vandana Kataria revolves round an about-to-wed couple who be taught, nicely earlier than they undergo with the nuptials, that marriage is certainly something however a mattress of roses.
The peppy and playful Hindi-Malayalam movie is punctuated by moments of excessive depth that pit sister towards sister, man towards girl, particular person towards household.
The circulation of the story is a contact uneven and the resolutions and closures that Love, Sitara thinks up are typically considerably facile, however the impulses of the women and men who individuals the plot aren’t at all times predictable.
The screenplay, written by the director and Sonia Bahl, centres on the approaching marriage ceremony of a Mumbai-based Malayali inside designer performed by Sobhita Dhulipala and Punjabi chef Arjun Anand (Rajeev Siddhartha) within the small-town Kerala dwelling of the previous’s grandmother (B. Jayashree).
The household reunion is the end result of a uneven now-off, now-on relationship. It solely will get worse. Over the span of some days, every thing that may go incorrect does go incorrect. Buried secrets and techniques come to the fore, simmering tensions rise, and indignant outbursts put the marriage underneath a cloud.
The lid is blown off a clandestine love affair. And a wedding hits the skids. As skeletons tumble out of the closet, a long-suppressed fact drives a wedge between two sisters, one ‘fortunately’ married the opposite a confirmed spinster.
Within the turmoil that ensues, the members of the family are compelled to have a relook on the decisions that they, and their close to ones, made up to now and are within the means of considering within the current.
On the face of it, no one in and across the household has any obvious fear on the planet. Would-be bride Sitara (Sobhita Dhulipala) is a super-successful inside designer. Bridesmaid Anjali (Tamara D’Souza), the titular character’s finest good friend, is a busy photojournalist. And Sitara’s aunt, Hema (Sonali Kulkarni), is an airhostess she seems as much as.
The North Indian man who’s about to turn into part of the household has plans in place for a self-owned restaurant in Singapore. Sitara’s dad Govind (Sanjay Bhutiani) heads a lodge chain. Thus, on the skilled entrance, they’re all in full management. It’s from the private sphere that their issues stem.
Within the movie’s opening scene, Sitara is instructed she is pregnant. The information nonplusses her as a result of her ovaries are believed to be broken. Alarmed, she returns to Arjun (Rajeev Siddhartha), the person she broke up with a couple of months in the past, and proposes to him.
It’s now the man’s flip to be caught abruptly. However he not solely agrees to marry Sitara, he additionally acquiesces to go together with her and tie the knot the standard manner, surrounded by family and friends in Kerala.
After the couple lands in Kerala and they’re joined by Anjali, who’s uncertain whether it is a good suggestion for Sitara to make the leap, a few of the movie’s focus shifts to Amumma (B. Jayashree), the clever, chatty and insouciant grandma who has a manner of constructing mild of the vagaries of the man-woman relationship.
The previous woman has clearly seen far more life than anyone else. Fact bombs maintain exploding round her. She doesn’t lose her calm. Sitara’s mother, Latha (Virginia Rodrigues), Hema’s elder sister, does. Her response to a disaster turns into the movie’s principal flashpoint.
Everyone within the household both nurses a dangerous secret or is saved at midnight about an inconvenient fact. They lurch from one disaster to a different within the cut price. Their obfuscations vary from one thing as innocuous as smoking on the sly to issues of far larger gravity reminiscent of hiding a being pregnant or carrying on with an extra-marital affair gone its expiry date.
Granny, the 2 sisters and Sitara confront revelations and forgotten indiscretions that threaten to derail their relationships. The pursuit of happiness, they determine, is invariably a path strewn with thorns, particularly when lies are perpetuated to keep away from dealing with the reality.
Discounting a minor squirt of pre-climactic mush, Love, Sitara is a refreshingly non-judgmental, fair-minded and nimble-toed tackle the grief that women and men trigger to themselves and to these round them as they attempt to both pull the wool over one another’s eyes or try to name each other’s bluff.
The rigmarole, offered with a sprinkling of humour, provides as much as an interesting pastiche of human foibles, marital shenanigans, pre-nuptial second ideas and emotional somersaults. The movie sparkles vibrant sufficient and incessantly sufficient for the whirligig to carry its course.
A vibrant color palette (cinematographer: Szyman Lenkowski), a usually brisk tempo (editor: Paramita Ghosh) and a busy storyline by which the previous continually impinges upon the current and the place the romantic and the illicit, the tender and the tetchy and the bouncy and the mildly poignant obtain simple co-existence.
As Sitara and her household make their manner by the loves and peeves, confessions and recriminations and apologies and assertions that swirl round them, they uncover that fact is commonly unpalatable and discomfiting however it by no means ceases to be helpful.
However Love, Sitara actually is not out to harangue or reform anyone. It tells a full of life, entertaining story a few complicated household that’s endearing regardless of its potted historical past of duplicities, confusions and compromises.
Actors we don’t often see in Hindi movies, from veteran stage and movie actress B. Jayashree to Mukti Bhawan producer Sanjay Bhutiani in his first on display screen function, brighten up Love, Sitara. Virginia Rodrigues, Tamara D’Souza and Rijul Ray (who performs a health care provider and household good friend) do their bit with aplomb.
Sobhita Dhulipala and Rajeev Siddhartha current convincingly dynamic portraits of two dissimilar individuals searching for, shedding and straining to regain love with out abandoning their individuality.
Unpretentious and steadfastly easy, Love, Sitara has a hoop of sustained relatability to it. It’s nicely value a viewing.