Film Review: Do Patti [Two Cards]

Starring: Kajol, Kriti Sanon, Shaheer Sheikh, Tanvi Azmi, Brijendra Kala, Vivek Mushran

Director: Shashanka Chaturvedi

This female-centric thriller which dropped on Netflix recently gives little away except that it is the story of identical twin sisters.

Saumya (Sanon) is a shy and retiring orphan who helps her beloved nanny Maaji (Azmi) and uncle (Mushran) run a little curio store in an idyllic hilly town. A chance encounter with local tourism entrepreneur Dhruv Sood (Sheikh) soon accelerates into a love story as his disarming personality begins to draw her out of her shell.

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Their affair is just about blossoming when Saumya’s twin sister Shailee (Sanon) comes to town and quite blatantly makes a play for her sister’s love interest, rekindling their childhood rivalries. The contrasting outgoing and bubbly personality of Shailee attracts Dhruv towards Shailee and away from Saumya. But with some helpful nudges from Maaji and under pressure from his overpowering father, Dhruv decides that his future happiness lies with the calmer and homey personality traits of Saumya.

While the marriage proposal and eventual wedding is quite blissful, it soon becomes clear that there is a side to Dhruv that makes him a less than eligible husband. Saumya is seen hiding her bruises and is very much the talk of the small town by the time police officer Vidya Jyothi Kanwar (Kajol) gets involved. Will Vidya be able to intervene before things take a gruesome turn for the twins or will she unravel the mystery too late?

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This is a film that had a lot more promise than it eventually manages to deliver. While the scene setting and cinematography is spot on, the script is full of jerks that take the story this way and that. The result is that ‘Do Patti’ can never seem to make up its mind what its central message should be. By the time it gets to the stark messaging around the deep emotional scars associated with domestic violence, the film falls prey to a common Bollywood blunder of going into an extended and quite unnecessary diatribe to hammer down the message.

While Sanon’s double take as demure and drastic is commendable as an ode to Hindi film classics such as ‘Seeta Aur Geeta’, Kajol could have done without the exaggerated accent she has chosen to adopt for her character. All in all, the result is a fairly watchable flick that would have benefited from a tighter edit and some clear-eyed focus.