‘Do Patti’ review: Two for sorrow

Do Patti begins with scattered shots of paragliding gone wrong and a stakeout on a bridge, followed by a woman in a police station telling the cops her husband tried to kill her. Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, released in August, also has a stakeout on a bridge, and its first scene is a woman in a police station telling the cops her husband is going to kill her. Both films are written by Kanika Dhillon, both are Netflix releases. Did no one think it was a problem that the films start the exact same way?

Vidya Jyothi (Kajol) is a cop in Devipur, a sleepy Uttarakhand town. She’s dying for some excitement, which explains her latching on to a domestic violence case. Saumya (Kriti Sanon) has a bruise on her forehead and the neighbours heard what sounded like her husband, Dhruv (Shaheer Sheikh), assaulting her. But she won’t press charges—not yet at least. The next day, Vidya meets Saumya at a gift store, only it’s her twin, Shailee (also Sanon).

When Saumya’s surrogate parent, whom she calls Maa ji (Tanvi Azmi), starts relating their family history while swigging rum from a bottle, Kajol takes a sabbatical from what, until then, appeared to be her film. By the time she resurfaces half an hour later, we’ve learnt that the sisters were orphaned, that Saumya was a sickly child, and that Shailee was jealous of the attention she got, grew up to be wild and bent on destroying her timid sibling’s happiness. She sees an opportunity when Saumya shyly starts dating Dhruv, the brattish son of a politician. Saumya and Dhruv eventually marry, but that means little in a Dhillon film.

Do Patti, directed by first-timer Shashanka Chaturvedi, is a film without conviction. It’s not a difficult story to keep up with, but everything is painfully spelt-out. When Dhruv is tiring of party girl Shailee, Maa ji sidles up and asks him: “Have you chosen the wrong sister?” Later, he says the same thing, though about Saumya. When Vidya has a pivotal change of heart, it’s because of a stray remark, not any kind of detective work or logical thinking. It’s a crucial step in the larger journey of the film, but the disinterest in selling the leap feels almost contemptuous of the viewer.

There are ingredients that recur in much of Dhillon’s writing work: impulsive, strong women, insecure, weak men, bad romances, fragile mental states, sadism (if not sadomasochism), streaks of perversity. In several films, there’s also a crime, a patsy, and a tough investigating officer. There’s a lot of fun, pulpy, purple dialogue. Though Dhillon hasn’t directed yet, the films she’s written seem to belong to her more than their directors or stars. But it’s also true that many of these films are bang average. It’s a strange case—distinct authorial voice, filmography of little distinction.

Even though it’s signalled early on, I chuckled when Kajol turns up as a lawyer—after losing her for 30 minutes, extreme measures were evidently needed to bump up her screentime. She does an afterthought of a Haryanvi accent; she even makes a trip to Sonipat (represented by the dark interior of a bar). Her best scenes are bantering with a mild-mannered junior cop (Brijendra Kala, quietly effective as he usually is). Sanon has some fun playing the vampy evil twin—a plastered Shailee imitating her sister telling her to drink some water ("TU paani pee le") is hilarious.

In the two Hasseen Dilruba films and Judgmentall Hai Kya, Dhillon toyed with our presumptions about characters and their motives. But Dhruv is such a charmless boor that there’s little doubt where the film is headed (we are shown on several occasions that he can’t tell the twins apart). You could, of course, lay these problems at Chaturvedi’s door, but Do Patti is a largely anonymous directing job. The writer (also the co-producer and “creative producer”) is clearly calling the shots, as she appeared to be on the disappointing Hasseen Dillruba sequel. Dhillon seems to be gravitating towards directing. She might have better luck bringing her stories to fruition herself.  

‘Do Patti’ is on Netflix.