Just arrived in Mumbai, living in a tiny shack with paper-thin walls, Uma (Radhika Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak) are trapped in a very new, very awkward arranged marriage. At first, Uma does her best to cope with the heat, her lack of domestic skills, her bumbling spouse and their nosy neighbours, but an incident at Gopal’s cousin’s wedding changes her dramatically.
I will say no more than that, as Karan Kandhari’s darkly comic drama is best seen with as little prior knowledge as possible. At first, it seems like it is a gritty domestic drama but it becomes much more strange than that. I laughed a number of times at the deadpan nature of Apte’s transformation and her acceptance of it. Kandhari has cited Buster Keaton as an influence and that becomes increasingly apparent.
Admittedly, sometimes it feels like a series of increasingly bizarre scenes rather than a coherent whole but Apte’s animalistic performance holds it together. I imagine a lot of people will struggle to be carried along like I was, and would blanche at the weird stop motion animals that appear, but I thought it was delightfully and uniquely odd.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10