Love, Sitara opens with a Kerala wedding, with a tara from Sobhita Dhulipala in the midst of a shameless introduction to her dysfunctional family. Externally representing a happy delusional image of an ideal group, Tara’s family has perfected the art of casually masking the truth. It is a typical toxic Indian family that is executed in hypocrisy and houses several silent secrets, enough to destroy it.
However, Tara is not exactly leading a perfect life to stick to the plan. In the second scene we find it in a clinic after discovering that she is pregnant, horrified by the discovery that contraception works only 95 percent of the time. Flooded with emotions, makes an improvised marriage proposal to her boyfriend chef, Arjun (Cajeev Siddhartha), with whom she shares a turbulent romantic story, conveniently hiding the truth about her pregnancy. The couple decides to have their wedding in the childhood house of Tara in Kerala the same month. Thus begins a complicated circus of secrets, manutany and moldings of truths.
The defective romance here is not only restricted to the main pair. Each romantic relationship of the film is defective. The house helps drunk and favorite aunts are wrapped in illicit matters with married men. The film presents a disturbing variety of inappropriate couples, exposing the sad reality of many Indian marriages.
Love, Sitara is a satirical mockery of romantic relationships. It exposes the failures immediately, without beating much around the bush. The film stands out in exposing the hypocrisy that permeates society, where people publicly condemn others for the same secrets that are hidden. With unwavering honesty, love, Sitara reveals the defects and the double standard that often underlines our most intimate connections.
What I liked especially was the attempt of the director Vandana Kataria of a balanced representation of traditionalism and modernity. It is one of the few recent films where the two coexist and indicate the discomfort of this paradoxical existence. It does not justify the culture of modern connection, but also questions the traditional marriage. The film is also directed from a stereotypical representation of Malayali households in the cinema of northern India, where houses reduced to extended temples are seen with rooms.
As for the actions, Dhulipala has done a decent job by portraying a defective, messy and selfish woman who cannot clarify her priorities. Tara is not written in a way that moves you or makes you feel sorry for her and her self -infected problems, but it is a good rest of the stereotypical extremes of women represented on the screen. You will not feel much sympathy for her, but that is perhaps the whole point.
Siddhartha and Virginia Rodrigues, however, offer everyone’s best performances. The two actors provide a relaxing presence to the chaotic lives around them. Their balance, unlike the hypocrites that surround them, is pleasant and charming. Siddhartha’s kitchen sequences are cathartic, and Rodrigues’ composure on how he handles things is the highlight. Although the script does not offer much space to both of several layers, they shine in their roles.
Love, Sitara pretends well and begins strong, but something lacks its general execution. The issues of hypocrisy, facade and infidelity are mentioned, but the film fails around the impact they could have on the characters and the story. Although there are some powerful scenes, including that Rodrigues’ character has a nervous collapse after a disturbing revelation, the impulse continues to go over time.
The dining table conversations are particularly difficult to see. Laughter feels forced and jokes lose their landing. They feel more like the laughs of the laughter of laughter than a regular family dinner. Although the film has the claim of families, these false explosions of laughter become too much to take.
Love, Sitara has all the ingredients of a good film on paper, with a perfect flavor of the traditional and the modern and how both remain deeply defective, but lacks a final touch. He ends up feeling as a good first draft for a film, which has the potential to translate into something more challenging and complex, but launched herself hurriedly with her medium cooking ideas. The film is conveniently skipped how ugly infidelity can be. While I understand that Kataria could have wanted to prevent the film from being too heavy or seems a moral lesson about monogamy, however, the narrative could have been more convincing if the realities of the relationship problems it poses were considered.
Some of the tropes seem badly tight and act as unnecessary fillings for history, scattered throughout the film for decorative purposes. For example, Arjun’s father, a retired military officer, is little more than Pr, who added to the film as well as another example of a dysfunctional relationship. He is there only to despise, give a disappointed look at his son and use a pretentious badge of superiority. The film could, sincerely, either without him, or at least given some more significant scenes to justify his presence.
On the contrary, some of the tropes of characters were wonderful in their small presence but strongly underutilized. B Jayashree, for example, plays Tara’s wild grandmother. She is without apologies, she loves to scan through newspapers for fun obituaries, and knows when to leave her foot. Jayashree is a pleasure to see in each of his scenes. However, despite the fact that his character seems important at the beginning, he soon takes an unexpected rear seat; As if the director forgot about her.
However, despite its deficiencies, love, Sitara is a decent version of family dysfunction in Indian families, which effectively contrasts the relations of the old school and the modern ones, while never favoring one over the other. It is a film that shows a mirror about the hypocritical standards of society, which laments the unstable and skipping culture of young people’s relations and, nevertheless, has been conveniently accommodating inappropriate relations, if it is kept secret. He exposes how lustful fallacies that affect humans have been well dismissed under the mask of idealism.
If only the film was not required to assume its theme with a little more determination, it would probably have reached the list of favorites of the year of many film, including me. Unfortunately, that is not the case. While love, Sitara might not be 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.
Qualification: 6/10
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