An unpretentious little gem that is remarkably comfortable
A drama about an extramarital affair — yes, not one, but two — that threatens to tear a couple apart can easily lose its way and turn into a tangled mess. Do or do pair Another Bollywood wedding story. It is not.
Confusion is all around when forbidden love starts to get out of hand. However, it’s all confined to an orbit inhabited by just four people – a woman and her husband and their respective lovers – involved in two secret communications. No noise in the film itself. Far from it. It gets a clean, uncluttered path.
Equal parts delightful and admirably mellow, Do or do pairDirected by first-timer Shirsha Guha Thakurta, strikes a delicate balance between the highs of secret romance and the lows that come with the struggle to keep it under wraps.
The main strength of the film lies in the unusual, extraordinarily delightful pairing of Vidya Balan and Prateek Gandhi as a married couple who split up after navigating their way through a stagnant relationship for years.
The two lead actors create a pair of real and relatable characters who are married and looking for – and finding – excitement elsewhere. They are helped by the controlled, non-judgmental tone of the writing.
The screenplay is written by Amrita Bagchi, Esha Chopra and Supratim Sengupta. Do Aur Do Pair takes the audience to Kavya Ganesan and Aniruddha Banerjee’s Mumbai home a decade after the two college mates run away from Ooty and cut all ties with the former’s family.
Fifteen years after they first met and 12 years after their wedding, their relationship is as good as ever. As they go through the motions, Kavya and Ani now each have a lover to spice up their dull, uneventful lives. Kavya has a serious relationship with a handsome hunk while Ani is deeply involved with an aspiring actress.
Vikram (Sendhil Ramamurthy, consistently in his element in his second Hindi film), the new man in Kavya’s life, is a world-traveling photographer from New York. Ani’s relationship with Nora (Ileana D’Cruz), a girl who is as passionate as they are, has assumed serious proportions.
But two and two do not make four Do or do pair. Calculations inevitably become random. As Kavya and Ani hide their affairs from each other, lewd messages and calls are exchanged. Neither knows what’s going on with the other but both are acutely aware that it’s time to go their separate ways.
A death in the family forces the couple to return to the mountain town where it all began for them. Long-dormant feelings are rekindled, memories come rushing back, songs from happier times come rushing back, and a marriage on the brink of collapse stumbles upon a second chance.
Do or do pair2017 Hollywood remake of the film loversA Bollywood drama about a marriage between a Tambrahma woman and a Bengali man does a great job of adapting the original material to the requirements that when things grow equal, their cultural and culinary differences grow.
Nowhere do two worlds collide more than in the kitchen. When the good times are reminisced, we witness a clash of selves Beygun PoshtoA recipe she picked up from her grandmother (grandmother) and Kavya’s Chicken 65, which she reminded her husband, originated from a Chennai restaurant. He has since become a vegetarian but is still uncompromisingly non-vegetarian.
Years together have robbed Kavya and Ani’s relationship of the spark that brought them together. Let alone years of not having sex, they don’t talk anymore and don’t even fight. Silence consumes relationships. They share a home but a wide river of indifference separates them. Sleeping turned away from each other with their faces on either side of the bed.
Do or do pair Kavya and Anir use their sleeping posture as a barometer of the health of their marriage. A brief return to his childhood home, where his father (Thalaivasal Vijay) still holds a grudge against him and his mother (Rekha Kudligi) does her best to welcome him, takes them back to the restaurant-cum-bar where Kavya proposes to Ani. They end up in beds so small that they sleep in each other’s arms. But can this couple rekindle the passion lost from their marriage?
Their professions also define them. Ani owns a floundering cork factory inherited from her father. Kavya is a dentist. Kavya and Ani don’t get stuck in the routine they’ve become accustomed to, neither of the two aspiring people who stir up their lives and push their marriage to the brink.
Nora is an actress who, when we first see her, is preparing herself for an audition that promises to be her ticket to the big time. Vic is a photographer who has traveled the world and sees poetry as a promise of a stable home.
At one point, Vic tells Kavya that he’s been to every city in the world but no place has ever felt like home. I am done roaming, chasing and running, he insisted. His peripatetic existence serves as a sharp contrast to the stasis of the poetic life.
For Kavya and Ani, life revolves around the office and the clinic. When at home, they do not exchange a word. They go about their business – controlling the air-conditioner temperature, worrying about the size of the garbage bag and keeping a tab on the anti-allergy tablets that are now a daily requirement.
The dread of domesticity and the lure of liberation collide Do or do or pair But the film does not take a moral stance on married couples cheating on each other.
Refreshingly indifferent to matters of the heart but inextricably involved in the way it treats the human equation inside and outside the institution of marriage, Do or do pair It’s an understated and gentle little gem that’s remarkably comfortable in its skin as the four characters roll around.
