Ek Ladki Ko Dekha to Aisa Laga Reviews
Review: A Lesbian Romantic Comedy, Sort of, by Way of Bollywood
- Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga
- Directed by Shelly Chopra Dhar
- Comedy, Drama, Romance
The makers of the Bollywood movie "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga" have a touching, if slightly demented, conventionalities in the transformative power of art. How to gainsay ugly stereotypes and entrenched beliefs? Put on a prove!
To backtrack (lots of spoilers ahead): "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga" ("How I Felt When I Saw That Daughter"), is a romantic comedy, sort of, nigh a woman named Sweety (Sonam Kapoor) whose suitor, Sahil (Rajkummar Rao), is a failing playwright. Sweety's not interested in Sahil. For one thing, she barely knows him. She ran into his theater ane day to hibernate from a pursuer, and paused long enough to pronounce the play being rehearsed — Sahil'south, of course — shallow on the topic of honey. Everyone loves a critic, and Sahil falls hard enough to follow her from Delhi to her home, in Punjab.
Most of the movie's complicated plot concerns Sahil's machinations to win Sweety, which include opening an interim schoolhouse so he can spend a bit of time with her. That'due south because she'south under a kind of soft house arrest: Her brother has taken away her cellphone and ripped out her net, worried that she will shame the family unit. Why? Is information technology because she loves a Muslim young man, as her brother tells their father, Balbir (Anil Kapoor, Sonam's father in existent life) — and who Balbir assumes must exist Sahil? No! This is a dodge to hide a scarier undercover.
What's troubling Sweety, who mopes and sighs and tearfully reads quondam diaries, is something she finally confesses to Sahil: She's in honey with another woman.
Sahil wastes no time being disappointed. Instead, he gets his big idea: to transform a fashion show (Sweety's dad owns a textile factory) into a musical comedy that preaches tolerance about same-sexual activity love. The stars are none other than Sweety and her girlfriend, Kuhu (Regina Cassandra), who upwards to this tardily point in the motion-picture show has been seen just briefly in flashbacks.
So, if Sweety'south love dares to speak its name — generally to worry nearly its credence — her love story has to whisper around the edges of this movie. "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga," directed by Shelly Chopra Dhar, isn't really a romantic comedy in the Bollywood sense — courting, squabbling, wedding. (Though there is a very on-brand vocal montage with Sweety and Kuhu hugging among ruins.) Instead, like Sahil's musical, "Ek Ladki" has to give lessons, tackling topics like shame, community acceptance and anxieties almost gayness as illness.
Indian movies, especially indie ones, accept treated gay themes before. (Not e'er happily: Fundamentalists burned theaters that were showing Deepa Mehta'southward lesbian film "Fire" in 1996.) The first mainstream Bollywood movie to have gay primary characters, "Dostana" (2008), was a cheat — the two men, played by big stars, were only pretending to be gay.
In that sense, "Ek Ladki," the outset to put lesbians center stage, is an improvement. No pretending hither, even if Kuhu is barely a character and romance simply a tiny portion of this movie. (The film's title may prime audiences for romance, though. It'southward also the title of a dreamy hitting song from "1942: A Love Story," a movie that starred … Mr. Kapoor.)
Sahil's big show ends with much of the audience walking out in disgust. It works, though, for ane of import person: Sweety's begetter, who had rejected her during rehearsals, when he learned that she and Kuhu weren't just playacting. But he comes around in time to interrupt the performance, delivering the message of beloved and tolerance that is this movie's reason to be.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/movies/how-i-felt-when-i-saw-that-girl-review.html