Saali Mohabbat escalates the hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-woman-scorned theme, and fashions a dark domestic thriller, discovers Deepa Gahlot.
A few years ago, Tisca Chopra had directed a short film called Chutney in which an ordinary looking housewife calmly scares the hell out of a pretty woman, who she sees flirting with her husband at a party.
Her feature directorial debut Saali Mohabbat escalates this hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-woman-scorned theme, and fashions a dark domestic thriller.
Smita (Radhika Apte) used to be an award-winning botany student, and it is hinted that she had a happy past.
But after marriage to an uncaring Pankaj (Anshumaan Pushkar), she spends her time looking after his comforts.
Her confidant is a gardener (Sharat Saxena), who is as passionate about plants as she is.
The story is told in flashback by Smita, to guests at a party, where she looks out of place, and a discussion on the importance of beauty has come up.
Living in a small, but developing UP town, Pankaj is a wastrel and a gambler, whose debts to a gangster, Gajendra Bhaiya (Anurag Kashyap) have mounted to several lakhs. The only way to repay is to force Smita to sell her late father's property in another town.
Then her cousin, Shalini (Sauraseni Maitra) comes to stay with them and Pankaj is smitten by her beauty.
Equally enamoured is Ratan (Divyenndu), a cop, who is on Gajendra's payroll, but wants to get rich quick.
Smita's hurt and humiliation leads her to commit a near-perfect crime, but Ratan is smarter than she had imagined.
Tisca Chopra's style of narrating the story captures the quirks of the characters -- the gangster has a kid, who sits by when he does his business, and is proud of his fancy imported coffee machine.
Shalini comes across as vampy, but is being goaded by her mother to marry. For her, the men are a way out of her problematic single status, which is difficult in a north Indian town.
Ratan is ambitious, but there's not much he can achieve in that place, run by the likes of the gangster and his unseen cohorts planning to grab prime real estate.
The emotional core of the film is Smita's devastation and silent rage at the betrayal by her husband and Shalini, and when her marriage -- unhappy though it may be -- is threatened, she strikes back.
Ratan also makes the mistake of underestimating her.
'Bada feminism chal raha hai ladies log mein,' the gangster says with reluctant admiration, and he is right.
Radhika Apte has played strange, deviant women before (most recently in Sister Midnight), and uses her expressive eyes to great effect.
Her performance is chilling because it is low key.
Her intensity is matched by the sly sharpness of Divyenndu, as the cop whose broken heart does not blunt his calculating brain.
Saali Mohabbat streams on Z5.
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