‘Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare’ Movie Review: Smashing patriarchy, Konkona Sen Sharma & Bhumi Pednekar’s film is a good overlook of the current feminism debates

Directed By
Alankrita Shrivastava

Produced By
Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor

Cast
Konkona Sen Sharma, Bhumi Pednekar, Amol Parashar, Aamir Bashir, Kubra Sait, Karan Kundrra, Vikrant Massey, Kalp Shah, Hearty Singh, Prabhat Raghunandan, Neelima Azeem, Pavleen Gujral, Shahnawaz Pradhan, Sushil Bonthiyaal, Nutan Surya, Ashwin Kushal, Kalyani Jha, Mushtaq Khan, Kumar Amlendu, Minim Dey, Sorabh Chauhan

Bollywood Bubble Rating
What’s It About
The story of the film revolves around two cousins Dolly and Kajal and about a secret shared by them. Living in the suburbs of New Delhi, Dolly is a middle-class working mother with two sons and a hardworking husband. They are excited as they plan to move to a newly built luxury apartment. There is a secret they keep to maintain their picture-perfect lifestyle. Kajal moves from rural India to live in a city, but the opportunities are very few for a young woman with little skills. So she works as a cyber-lover under the name Kitty on a dating app and meets a man. Now the two cousins who were critical of each other’s life, share their secrets and understand each other. Will their secrets ever spill out? Will they be able to lead life normally after knowing the secret of the other? Well, that’s what the story is all about.

What’s Hot
Konkona Sen Sharma and Bhumi Pednekar are in top form. Both the ladies have managed to imbibe the Bihari accent in such perfection, that it’s really hard to tell that neither of them is actually Bihari in real life. The way they fight with each other is the perfect way how cousins would fight in real life – not as less as strangers would and also not as much as real siblings would. The bonding between the two sisters, even though they have their separate lives charted out pretty boldly, is almost natural and perfect. Bhumi and Konkona make sure that they have not just played the characters but even lived it.

The writing and direction by Alankrita Srivastava show how well she knows this topic and has lived a life where patriarchy has always dominated everything a girl does. The writing is quirky and doesn’t go too overboard in male-bashing, but at the same time makes a sticky note of pointers which men need to always remember with respect to any woman in their lives.

Along with Konkona and Bhumi’s acting, the writing even leers towards smashing of patriarchial rules set by the Indian society against women. It helps you realise where men are going wrong and how these feminism debates are not something that’s done just for the heck of it – they (feminism debates) actually do have a lot of sense and need in current day society. Konkona Sen Sharma and Bhumi Pednekar’s quirky comic sense will make you fall in love with the realism in this Alankrita Srivastava directed film

Some of the characters portrayed by actors like Aamir Bashir, Vikrant Massey, Kubra Sait, Karan Kundrra may be small but very impactful. Shows how a brilliant actor can turn even a small scene into something memorable. For example, you can take Neelima Azeem in this film where she just has one small scene, but that is sure enough to make you connect and even possibly make your eyes moist thinking of your mothers.

What’s Not
If the movie had gone for a theatrical release, am sure there would have been a lot of cuts in the numerous sex scenes of the movie. Going on OTT, thankfully that concern has been thrown out of the window. While that’s the good thing, some of these close-set romantic scenes have been shot aesthetically, but there is a plethora of these in the movie, and after 3-4 of these you’re just compelled to fast forward the scenes as you’re so engrossed in the story, that you don’t wish the sex scenes to break that flow. Surely 1-2 could have been cut down.

The music of the movie by Arjuna Harjai, Clinton Cerejo, Sadhu Tiwari is quite peppy and raw, but it hardly manages to stand out and give you something that you’ll remember even the next morning after watching the show.

Lastly, the sheer length of the movie, around 124 minutes, could have been edited and chopped down to around 110 minutes or so.

Verdict
‘Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare’ is one of those rare films which when seen in film festivals makes you want to stand up and clap, but when you watch it in the sanctity of your homes on an OTT platform, you end up wanting to go on fast forward mode. Nevertheless, the topics portrayed and the brilliance of the 3 women – Konkona, Bhumi and Alankrita – makes this definitely WORTH A WATCH. I am going with 3.5 stars.

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Also Read: ‘Cargo’ Movie Review: Coming from India, Vikrant Massey-Shweta Tripathi’s science fiction is capable of making a dent in the cosmos

Prateek Sur

Born a Movie Buff, working as a Film Critique and enjoying life as a Bollywood Reporter.

Email: editor@bollywoodbubble.com Phone: +91 8355910465