‘Love, Sitara’ movie review: Pre-wedding blues with Sobhita Dhulipala

Love, Sitara begins with a nod to Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” says Sitara (Sobhita Dhulipala). Unlike Leo Tolstoy’s great novel — whose opening line these words are — the writing in Vandana Kataria’s film isn’t as quotable, though it tries hard. You can assemble a slim volume of pithy self-help slogans from Abbas and Hussain Dalal’s dialogue: “Happiness lies in honesty.” “Dysfunction means they are making an effort.” “I’ll fix myself, before I can fix my relationships.” 

Sitara, or Tara, and Arjun (Rajeev Siddhartha), have been dating turbulently for some years. They are both urbane, attractive, career-minded: she’s an interior designer of some acclaim; he’s a chef who’s landed a spot in Singapore. When Tara is informed by her doctor that she’s pregnant —a surprise diagnosis — she withholds this fact from Arjun while proffering her hand in marriage. Both families convene in Kerala, at the house of Tara’s maternal grandmother, where a muhurat is fixed over fresh banana fritters and 2 States-style comedy.

Thankfully, the comedy is short-lived. Early on, a friend remarks, with some surprise, how it’s so unlike Tara to warm up to the idea of marriage. We learn that Arjun had proposed to her three years ago, but she turned him down. Her pregnancy, then, has prompted this turn-around, but how exactly? As deceptions and dishonesties emerge — including a possible fissure in her parent’s marriage — Tara finds herself in a deep emotional quandary. It is an interesting predicament to drop Dhulipala in, since she plays another Tara, a skilled wedding planner who sees through the lies of others, in the Prime Video series Made in Heaven. 

An acclaimed production designer, Kataria made her directorial debut with Noblemen (2019), a complex exploration of bullying and toxic masculinity in a boarding school. Love, Sitara turns its focus on female experience; Sonali Kulkarni takes a pivotal role in Sonia Bahl’s screenplay, and veteran theatre actor B. Jayashree is Tara’s sweetly eccentric Amumma. Yet, somehow, the new film does not have the same psychological depth as Kataria’s earlier work. Though it aims for genuine messiness, it also seems to hold back. 

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The biggest hitch is the writing, which tacks indiscriminately between English and Hindi (with sprinklings of Malayalam). The family drama feels more arranged than life-like: everyone has the right repartee for the right situation (“A mistake can wreck a thousand lives”; “hearts, like monuments, should be built of stone”). A late flare-up abounds in TV serial weepiness, complete with thunderclaps and lashings of rain. The setting of the Kerala countryside isn’t put to effective use; some of the character sketches veer on caricature, like the gabby housemaid with the alcoholic husband.

So much better is the penultimate scene, with Tara and Arjun arguing like a believable couple with some miles behind them. If I could only put Made in Heaven’s Tara Khanna out of my mind, I would have perhaps appreciated Dhulipala’s performance better. Ikhlaque Khan, who plays Arjun’s retired armyman father, obsessed with desh and duty, is one of the great sitters in modern Hindi cinema. My favourite character, though, is Tara’s best friend Anjali (Tamara D’Souza), an award-winning photojournalist who covers human rights issues, and who turns up with her camera to shoot the pre-wedding celebrations. A decent side hustle, all said. 

Love, Sitara is currently streaming on ZEE5

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