I am THRILLED by how many of us saw this opening night. Especially because I was left with so many questions, and now we get to chew them over together!
Whole plot in two paragraphs:
Ranveer lives with his rich Punjabi family that is dominated by his grandmother Jaya. His grandfather Dharmendra is disabled since a fall years earlier and has memory problems. Dharam suddenly starts saying a name, “Jamini”, so Ranveer looks in his old diary and figures out who the woman was and goes to see her granddaughter (Alia) who is a TV personality/aggressive journalist. Ranveer is immediately smitten, and Alia is immediately attracted. Plus, they find out that their grandparents had an affair decades earlier. Alia’s grandma Shabana is now widowed and still dreams of Dharmendra. Alia and Ranveer start helping their grandparents meet in secret and along the way keep up their own flirtation, eventually turning into make out sessions and goofiness. But then Ranveer proposes and Alia insists it was just a fling, they are too different. Alia goes on a work trip to Kashmir and realizes she actually loves Ranveer, returns home and proposes to him. Only their families will never agree. So as a test, they will each spend 3 months living in the other’s home.
Alia’s family is Bengali, intellectual, artistic. Her Mom is an English professor, her Dad is a classical Kathak dancer. Shabana is the only one who truly welcomes Ranveer into the home, her parents are a bit standoffish. Ranveer tries but struggles with poetry readings and making his own breakfast and so on. In Ranveer’s house, Alia gently bonds with his sister and mother, learning that his sister (who the family keeps trying to marry off) is a financial genius, and his mother has dreams of being a singing star. She tries to bond with the Dad, but he stays aloof, and Jaya is openly hostile. It reaches a peak when Jaya arranges for Alia’s Dad to be publicly humiliated by suggesting he dance at a Punjabi event where he is laughed off the stage. Ranveer apologizes to him and they finally bond over how he is trying to be a better person thanks to living with their family, but they need to give him a fair chance too. Meanwhile, Alia suggests a new ad campaign for Ranveer’s family’s sweet company and suddenly she seems to be winning over his side too. Until his family comes to her family’s Durga celebration and his father and grandmother storm out in the middle. Ranveer follows after and tries to talk to them but his father starts going on how “immoral” Alia’s family is. Alia jumps in to defend her family and talk back to Ranveer’s father, including slapping his pointing finger away. Ranveer tells her not to disrespect his father, it becomes a fight between them, and the engagement is over. Back home, Ranveer finally stands up to his Dad and his mother and sister follow suit. Just as they are preparing to leave the house, Dharmendra dies. After his death, Ranveer’s father realizes he has been a bad son, a bad husband, and a bad father because he put his relationship with his mother over everything. He apologizes and promises to do better. Alia’s family talks to her about how no family is perfect and she needs to be willing to accept the mess, to believe that Ranveer can change and be different from his family, Shabana confessing that her “perfect” dead husband used to beat her. Two months later, Ranveer’s parents, united, come to her family home and humbly ask her to take their son back. Ranveer and Alia embrace, and happy wedding scene over end credits!
I spent this whole movie waiting for the ending because that would make or break it for me. And I am giving it a pass, but just barely.
I like that, ultimately, Jaya is NOT forgiven. She is a toxic person who turned her son into a toxic person and created a household of misery. She is too far gone to be allowed into their lives, and it is okay to say that out loud.
I do not like that Jaya’s son/Ranveer’s father IS forgiven. On the one hand, it’s interesting that the film establishes how toxic masculinity is taught, how his mother squashed any instinct of softness in him from birth. But on the other hand, why? Why does the male figure get a pass while the woman doesn’t, for doing the same things? Especially since we saw Jaya was abused by her mother-in-law which taught her to be abusive in turn?
I very much like that the entire plot, including the ending, is driven by Ranveer and Alia and NOT their parents. They ending fight is about their families, but it’s still between them. Karan even frames it that way, having it go from Ranveer facing his Dad, to Alia and Ranveer’s Dad with Ranveer on the side, to Alia and Ranveer with everyone else shoved aside.
I loved loved loved what they did with Alia’s father. He isn’t the typical patriarch, he is a dancer, and he let his career take a backseat to his wife’s (they moved to Delhi for his wife’s job), he cooks for the family sometimes, he is emotionally open, he is loving, all those things. But when Ranveer apologizes for humiliating him in public, he is quietly strong and dignified in his response and you see why her family truly respects him (not just fears him as in Ranveer’s family with his father). This is a model of manhood from the older generation that Ranveer can aspire to.
I also loved loved loved how they handled the power balance between Alia and Ranveer without needing to underline it. Ranveer spends all his time at the gym and buying clothes, he falls in love with Alia at first sight and proceeds to tease and flirt and follow after her. Alia is strong and powerful in her career, works long hours, is ambitious, and Ranveer is there to bring her a tiffin. There’s never a conversation saying “I will be the sexy one who stays home and cooks while you go out and work”, we just see it. And there’s no judgement on that, it’s fine that Alia loves her job, and it’s fine that Ranveer doesn’t care about working but is good at emotional labor.
I loved loved loved the various gender speeches. Alia’s Mom has a fabulous speech about how it’s not “respectful” of men to not talk about/tough ladies undergarments, it would be more respectful to treat them as a fact of life and women as equals. Alia’s intro is a great speech attacking the idea that rape is somehow the “fault” of the woman. And the “controversial” ad that Alia suggests replacing shows woman dressed in saris serving laddoos to their husbands as they go to work. It’s truly, on the surface, not controversial. But the film, and Alia, point out how the underlying assumption of women being beautiful and cooking while men go to work is the problem.
The use of Kathak was fabulous. Twice we see men do a female number from Devdas. And it’s not drag, it’s not making a statement, it’s just doing a very lovely very difficult dance as it was choreographed. And it works, the male energy works (especially with “Dole Re Dole”). You can take the same dance, change the gender of the dancers, and it feels different but just as good (this is something that’s been done in ballet for a while, and it works the same there).
Oh, and the sexiness was amazing! You really feel that burble of excitement whenever the two of them meet, that instinct to almost kiss but not quite. And then they do kiss, and the world doesn’t end. They kiss, they hug, he undoes her sari strap, and everyone is just having a good time and not freaking out. Almost as though sex is a normal human thing! And at the same time, as though sex is just sex. We don’t actually know one way or the other if Alia and Ranveer go “all the way”, there’s no filmed sex scene. But it also doesn’t matter. They know they want to have sex with each other, the question is if they are also in love? And Dharmendra and Shabana’s relationship in the present is a lovely holding hands and kissing relationship, we don’t know if their brief affair in the past was physical or emotional, and that doesn’t matter either. It was deeply meaningful, we know that.
Other thing that was amazing, the “infidelity”! The film absolutely does not judge Dharmendra and Shabana. Shabana’s husband beat her and she stayed with him out of fear. Dharmendra was ignored and uncared for at home, his wife Jaya seemed incapable of love for anyone and kept his son from him. If one week together gave them the strength to survive their daily lives, good for them. And if widowed Shabana and mentally ill Dharmendra can find some happiness by spending time together in their last days, good for them too. This is beyond any strict moral rule, this is bending with the reality of the world.
Okay, that’s all I can think of to mention! And I very VERY much want your opinion on all of these points. Talk to me!
Oh, and final point, what was your theater experience like???? It was playing at about 5 theaters in my area, only one in the city and the others in the suburbs. I went to a suburban theater and it was about half full for our showing. I should say, there was also a MASSIVE storm last night (we had to pull over and sit for a while to wait for it to pass on the way home), so that may have cut down on how many people came out.
