Love, Sitara opens with a wedding in Kerala, with the Tara of Sobhita Dhulipala in the middle of a shameless introduction to her dysfunctional family. Outside a delicately happy image of an ideal group, Tara’s family has perfected the art of hiding the truth with casualness. It is a typical toxic Indian family which takes place on hypocrisy and houses several silent secrets, enough to tear it away.
However, Tara does not exactly lead a perfect life that stuck in the plan. In the second scene itself, we find her panic in a clinic after discovering that she was pregnant, dismayed by the discovery that contraception only works 95% of the time. Flooded with emotions, she makes an impromptu marriage proposal to her boyfriend’s boyfriend, Arjun (Rajeev Siddhartha), with whom she shares turbulent romantic history – conveniently hiding the truth about her pregnancy. The couple decides to have their wedding at Tara’s childhood house in Kerala the same month. Thus begins a complicated circus of secrets, detective and molding truths.
Imperfect romance here is not only limited to lead pair. Each romantic relationship of the film is imperfect. Home aid is married to drunkards and favorite aunts are wrapped in illicit affairs with married men. The film presents a disturbing range of inappropriate couples, exposing the sad reality of many Indian weddings.
Love, Sitara is a satirical mockery of romantic relationships. He immediately exhibits the faults, without beating a lot around the bush. The film excels in exposing the hypocrisy that permeates society, where people publicly condemn others for the same secrets they hide. With flawless honesty, love, Sitara reveals the defects and the double standard that often emphasize our most intimate connections.
What I particularly liked was the attempt by director Vandana Kataria to a balanced representation of traditionalism and modernity. It is one of the few recent films where the two coexist and underline the very clumsiness of this paradoxical existence. This does not justify the culture of modern connection but also calls into question the traditional marriage set up. The film also avoids a stereotypical representation of Malaysian households in the cinema in northern India, where you see houses reduced in extended temples with rooms.
As for the performances, Dhulipala did a decent job to portray a defective, meat and selfish woman who cannot put her straight priorities. Tara is not written in a way that will move you or make you feel sorry for her and her self-informing problems, but it is a great break with the stereotypical extremes of women represented on the screen. You will not feel much sympathy for her, but it may be all the point.
Siddhartha and Virginia Rodrigues, however, give the best performance of all. The two actors bring a soothing presence to the otherwise chaotic life that surrounds them. Their balance, as opposed to the hypocrites around them, is pleasant and delicious. Siddhartha’s kitchen sequences are cathartic, and Rodrigues’ composure in the way she manages things is a highlight. Even if the scenario does not offer much room for the two for a multilayer performance, they shine in their roles.
LOVE, Sitara has the intention and starts strong, but lacks a little in its global execution. The themes of hypocrisy, the facade and infidelity are all discussed, but the film bypasses the impact that they could have on the characters and the story. Although there are a few powerful scenes, including that where the character of Rodrigues has a nervous breakdown after a disturbing revelation, the momentum continues to have fun over time.
Dining table conversations are particularly difficult to look at. Laughter feels forced and jokes are missing landing. They feel more like laughter early in the morning than a usual family dinner. Even if film banks on the pretension of families, these false gusts of laughter become too useful to take.
Love, Sitara has all the ingredients of a good film on paper, with a perfect flavor of the traditional and modern and how the two remain deeply defective, but a final touch is missing. He ends up feeling like a good first draft for a film, which has the potential to translate into something more difficult and complex, but is published in a rush with his half -cooked ideas, instead. The film jumps conveniently on the way in which the ugly infidelity can obtain. Although I understand that Kataria could have wanted to prevent the film from being too heavy or seems to be a moral lesson on monogamy, the story would nevertheless could have been more convincing if it counted the realities of the relationship problems it raises.
Some tropes seem poorly adapted and act as unnecessary loads for the script, dispersed through the film for decorative purposes. For example, Arjun’s father, a retired military officer, is hardly more than Prop, who was added to the film as another example of a dysfunctional relationship. He is just there for contempt, gives disappointed looks to his son and has a pretentious badge of superiority. The film could, honestly, well done without him, or at least give him some more significant scenes to justify his presence.
Unlike, some of the tropes of character were wonderful in their little presence but highly underused. B Jayashree, for example, plays Tara’s wild grandmother. It is itself shamelessly, likes digitization through newspapers for funny necrologies and knows when to lower the foot. Jayashree is a joy to look in in each of his scenes. However, even if her character seems important at the beginning, she soon takes a rear seat unexpectedly; As if the director had forgotten it.
Despite its shortcomings, however, love, Sitara is a decent vision of family dysfunction in Indian families, which effectively contrasts old-school and modern relationships, while never promoting one in relation to each other. It is a film that shows a mirror to the hypocritical standards of society, which deplores the unstable culture and reducing the relationship of young people, and which nevertheless adapted inappropriate relationships, if it was secret. He exposes how lubricate errors distressing humans were well in smuggling under the mask of idealism.
If only the film was not afraid to take its subject with a little more grain, it would probably have reached the list of favorites of the year of many moviegoers, including me. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Although love, Sitara is not as good as it could have been, it is an honest attempt to portray the evolutionary dimensions of love and relationships, even if it does not scratch under the surface.
Note: 6/10
