Twin Tales:
They are identical twins—Saumya and Shailee (Kriti Sanon)–but they cannot stand each other. Shailee believes her sister is a drama queen, and Saumya thinks her twin wants to snatch everything that belongs to her. Then a man steps into the picture, and daggers are drawn.
Seeta Aur Geeta is the film often referred to in Shashanka Chaturvedi’s Do Patti, written by Kanika Dhillon, but the film they forgot is Sharmilee, which is more of the inspiration behind this one. Then, there’s the shadow of Kate Winslet hanging over Kajol, playing a glum cop called Vidya Jyoti—till every A list actress does not do her version of Mare Of Easttown, she won’t rest.
Vidya carries around a cage with a rabbit, for no discernible reason, and has a comic sidekick (Brijendra Kala), who gives her statistics about single women committing suicide. Her Haryanvi accent goes on and off, and her working class act does not convince, since she is the daughter of a lawyer and a judge, and has a law degree herself. That must have saved the producers (Dhillon and Sanon) the expense of getting another actor when a lawyer is needed later in the film.
In the hill station where the film is set, neurotic Saumya catches the eye of rich adventure sports enthusiast Dhruv Sood (Shaheer Sheikh), but the twin returns from her hostel and easily seduces the guy. She’s a bad girl so she must wear revealing dresses, smoke and drink copious amounts of booze straight from the bottle. The wild and adventurous Shailee appeals to Dhruv more, but family pressure to marry a “homely” girl, makes him choose the wrong twin.
Shailee parks herself in their home, and does not seem to notice that her sister is being battered by Dhruv. The only one who cares is the twins’ childhood nanny (Tanvi Azmi) and Vidya, who keeps trying to get Saumya to file a complaint against her abusive husband. But she does not want to look like her sister defeated her, till the violence gets too much.
In her case about attempted murder, Vidya wears her lawyers’ robes to represent Saumya, though she is not the defendant, and it should have been the public prosecutor’s job.
Suddenly, with no warning, Do Patti becomes a public interest statement against domestic violence, and in a complete travesty of the law seems to suggest that sending a man to prison for a bigger crime that he did not commit is okay, because spousal abuse is not taken seriously enough by society and the law. Vidya first fights the case, then decides to withdraw it and then goes oops and takes back the withdrawal.
The film stands upright to some extent on the basis of the performances of Kajol and Kriti Sanon. But despite the well-meaning support to victims of a social evil, it does more or less the opposite. The only good thing is that there is no male saviour riding into the scene to rescue the damsels in various stages of distress.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)