An amusing bridal switcheroo, “Laapataa Ladies” (or “Lost Ladies” in some territories) makes effective use of Bollywood’s broad social messaging. This mode of storytelling can be heavy-handed for the sake of mass appeal, but director Kiran Rao deftly combines the literal and symbolic, resulting in a crowd-pleaser filled — for better or worse — with innate goodness.
Rao returns to the director’s chair for the first time since 2011’s “Dhobi Ghat,” the somber Mumbai diary with heartrending music by Gustavo Santaolalla and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Among the most notable departures from her debut film is that the score for “Laapataa Ladies,” composed by Ram Sampath, has a bouncy and propulsive quality, keeping the movie’s comedic musings on track.
A passenger train plays host to a case of mistaken identity when young, lovelorn newlyweds Deepak Kumar (Sparsh Shrivastava) and Phool Kumari (Nitanshi Goel) are separated in an accidental spouse swap en route to the former’s village. Their crowded compartment is occupied by another newly married couple, strangers Pradeep Singh (Bhaskar Jha) and Jaya Tripathi (Pratibha Ranta), whose betrothal is more reluctant. Both wives have donned identical red veils and, per tradition, have been instructed to bow their heads. So, the error is clocked by neither the brides or grooms when they alight from the train with each other’s spouses.
The characters are separated by several miles and a lack of effective communication, given the 2001 setting (a few years prior to India’s telecom boom). Information is not only hard to come by, but is also meted out with caution. The soft-spoken Phool, though she loves Deepak, doesn’t know the name of the town where the in-laws reside, and is reluctant to even speak her husband’s name when asked — a cultural taboo Goel straddles with impressive timing. She ends up stranded on a railway platform, and is soon taken in by a band of free-spirited strangers leading solo lives, including an elderly cook at a local food stall (Chayya Kadam), whose no-nonsense attitude Phool finds alluring. Meanwhile, the misogynistic scumbag Pradeep — who scares Phool away with his advances, rather than helping her — remains hell-bent on tracking Jaya down for nefarious reasons.
The other half of this misunderstanding takes entertaining form, as Deepak doesn’t realize he’s been separated from Phool until he brings the veiled Jaya all the way back to his family’s home. They’re left completely flummoxed (and Deepak is practically shattered; Shrivastava imbues the role with the utmost sincerity), but they offer Jaya shelter while Deepak tries to figure out where Phool might have gone. The local police, led by the cartoonishly corrupt, tobacco-chewing Sub-Inspector Manohar (Ravi Kishan) are of little help to begin with, but Jaya — who tells Deepak’s family her name is Pushpa — is hell-bent on sabotaging their efforts to get both wives back to the respective husbands, a performance Ranta approaches with care and caution and she gradually unwraps Jaya’s inner life, one seldom seen or recognized by her in-laws, or by her own family.
The gendered norms which prevent both women from thriving, and which lead to their interchangeability in the first place, are visually established early on, but they also frequently re-appear in the dialogue. This is not unexpected from a mainstream Bollywood social drama, given the genre’s broad audience, and it does run the risk of becoming repetitive. The conversations, however, feature a snappy musicality that temporarily circumvents this problem: an impressive feat of moment-to-moment editing that, unfortunately, ends up in friction with the movie’s overall structure. Scene-to-scene, “Laapataa Ladies” doesn’t quite have the same smoothness. It moves on far too quickly from each moment, each punctuation and each punchline, cutting away to the next plot point a bit too mechanically to allow for space to ruminate on what’s being said, or what it means. However, these flaws end up being plastered over by how meaningfully the two leading women end up impacting each other’s lives from afar.
Sneha Desai’s screenplay casts a wide net over Hindu bridal norms and the roles of women in Indian society, though it seldom makes their oppression tangible by tying it to the real ugliness of social and financial oppression, let alone to despicable figures. Beyond Pradeep, everyone is largely a passenger to culture rather than a participant or purveyor. However, the movie’s broad digestibility is arguably a key reason for its success, as is Rao’s penchant for capturing a lively energy between her characters, even as they all but state each underlying theme out loud. It’s an approach worth accepting, given how effervescent “Laapataa Ladies” ends up feeling.
English (US) ·