Sanam Teri Kasam review

Sanam Teri Kasam

Directors: Radhika Rao, Vinay Sapru
Cast: Mawra Hocane, Harshvardhan Rane, Manish Chaudhari, Vijay Raaz, Sudesh Berry, Murali Sharma
Runtime: 154 minutes

Critics Rating: 2.5/5

Story: It is impossible for Saraswati Parthasarthy (Mawra Hocane) to get a guy for herself. After being turned down by ten men and disowned by her own family, Saroo finds solace in her incorrigible neighbour Inder (Harshvardhan Rane). Does their love story see a happy ending?

Review: A brooding, disgruntled, gruffly man with a heart of gold falls in love with a simple girl from a traditional family... quite an unlikely pair? Well, not for Bollywood atleast. But you forgive director duo Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru just because of their perfect casting. When everything falls flat in the film, the lead pair hold the forte with their effortless chemistry. For a romantic drama, the film has its most essential element right - the love story is impeccable.

It is mighty flawed otherwise. The sub tracks dilute the build-up of the movie. In the first half, the film wastes too much of its time and energy in what they call 'the make-over of the Vibhuti aunty'. Vijay Raaz breaks into an abhorrent item song with back-up dancers straight out of the sets of Shefali Jariwala's Kaanta Laga and give the 'fossil' Saroo a modern look. If this doesn't kill the audience, a father executing the last rites of his living daughter will.

As long as the focus stays on its leads, the film does a good job. Harshavardhan, besides flaunting his perfectly chiseled torso and walking topless all through the film, give his angst some charm. Mawra matches up with her innocence and vulnerability. From Inder softening every time he is around Saraswati, to watching them goof around in Kheech Meri Photo, they are a treat from the word go. You want to invest in these characters but the movie gets shrill over its 155 minutes, a little too sappy for liking and eventually boring. Your heart genuinely goes out to Harsh and Mawra who are let down by their clumsy narrative.

Aashiqui 2 did a good job at bringing back the 90s' melodramatic romance back but Sanam Teri Kasam is barely as compelling.

Tears Can't Rule the Screen : Sanam Teri Kasam

Sanam Teri Kasam is tailor-made for being subjected to, and failing the Bechdel test; a love story that would be any enlightened woman’s worst nightmare. Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru spin a modern, urban fairytale, albeit a gloomy, miserable one, which, in the name of being a woman-centric film, has one of the most feeble, helpless heroines seen in recent Hindi cinema, one who is let down by people around her, her own destiny and herself. She is the kind who can’t move even a step forward in life without a man for a crutch. The regressive messages come strongly encoded in the story: most men won’t look at you if you are not conventionally beautiful, the man who truly loves you will fathom your beauty despite those thick glasses but you will have to eventually take them off for him as well; and looking pretty is not about feeling good about yourself but for attracting a man and getting married to him.

So you have the plain Jane Saraswati “Saru” Parthasarathy (Mawra), who just can’t ensnare a good match for herself. Her conveniently conservative South Indian family doesn’t help much either. The mother weeps into her pallu and stays quiet, the authoritarian father, who would typically say thum for tum (you), insists on an IIM-IIT-Brahmin boy for her but, curiously, doesn’t seem as stern when it comes to the younger daughter Kaveri and her boyfriend. Meanwhile, the spoilt brat Kaveri shouts and screams at Saru because her boyfriend wants marriage and she can’t till the elder sister ties the knot. “Why can’t you get smart and find a man?” she thunders, while all you want to do is give her one tight slap. And then a Prince Charming Inder (Harshvardhan) comes to the aid of Saru. There is a romance which blooms, unknowingly to her, book by book (with notes and dried flowers between pages) — from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye to Erich Segal’s Love Story. He sulks, glares and flares his nostrils to let us know that he is much in love with her. That is when he is not fighting his own inner demons by drinking and sleeping precariously on the building terrace.

Now it’s the turn of Saru’s father go on a rampage, declare her dead for the family and even perform the last rites. If this is the kind of ridiculous, hyper family you are saddled with then it’s better to not have one. But sappy Saru will continue to love them. She will tell her mom not to meet her saying “Woh toot jaayenge” (dad will be shattered).

She is not the only one. Every single woman in the film is utterly inert . Men drive the women’s lives. Even the transformation of Saru is engineered by a man on being prompted by a man. And what an easy transformation it is! Take the glasses off and those ill-fitting khadi suits too and voila! You hoped for some whimsy here, some flight of imagination, but nothing gives.

So all that Mawra as Saru has to do is weep, and then weep some more and keep wiping off the tears from her eyes and cheeks with her hands. Also, it would be interesting to watch the film again to see if there’s any sequence or scene where she has not ended up weeping.

There is a lot of crying, especially towards the end, accompanied with the plaintive sounds of shehnai, otherwise almost a lost instrument in cinema these days. Both the hero and heroine have the most irrational fathers, living on extremes, illogically cussed at the start and unbelievably emotional in the climax. Why there’s even a weeping doctor and a crying cop here! Go with a boxful of tissues if you cry easily at the movies. If you are as cold-hearted as I am you’ll be left scratching your head and perennially looking at the watch hoping for things to wrap up fast. Alas, they don’t.