Wickedly brilliant Hindi comedy film “Laapataa Ladies” (2023) directed by Kiran Rao, written by Biplab Goswami and starring Nitanshi Goel, Sparsh Shrivastav, Pratibha Ranta, Chayya Kadam, Ravi Kishan among others.
The story is of two married couples travelling in the same compartment, to their different villages after marriage. The brides are wearing the same red colour saree and dress ornaments.
Deepak (Sparsh Shrivastav) and his wife Phool Kumari (Nitanshi Goel) are to get off first and by mistake Deepak drags the other wife Jaya/ Pushpa Rani (Pratibha Ranta) with him to his village. Both the brides have to wear the pallu of their saree down over their faces, which is the custom in north India. Due to this, Jaya/ Pushpa Rani did not know that she was travelling with the wrong husband.
Phool Kumari lands up at the later station and desperately searches for her husband there. Meanwhile mayhem ensues in Deepak’s village when they realise that the wife has been swapped. Typical Wodehousian scenario in an Indian village!!
Pushpa Rani decides to do her own things when she had realised earlier during her marriage itself that she was being married only for the dowry and that her husband had already married once and the first wife was suspiciously burnt alive. She anyway wanted to study further in organic farming in far away Dehradun.
Brilliant contextual movie with fine dialogues and local lingo built into it. Kiran has done ample justice to the superb script which very subtly takes a dig at some local customs and cultures like wearing a pallu, the north Indian male patriarchy, emancipation of woman to study further etc.
Fine acting by all the young actors, all first timers brilliantly done with no major stars save for Ravi Kishen who is a famous Bhojpuri star. No heavy preaching in the script makes this a beautiful movie to watch!! IMDB 7/10
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