Reviewing Dolly Kitty aur woh chamakte sitare

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Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare.jpeg


Alankrita Shrivastava takes off from the Lipstick under the burqa tale and continues it with Chamkte Sitare... The film opens to two sisters enjoying at the local fair and seem to be content in what looks like a happy family with Dolly (Konkona) with husband and two kids. Alongside we have Kaajal (Bhumi) staying with the family who is running away from being married off in her hometown (we have heard so much about that). In the next two hour or so we are witness to an unhappy marriage that Konkona has to wade through in between her brief fling with the food delivery boy Osmaan Ansari (Amol Parashar) and battling with her son's sexual orientation. And Kaajal's ups and downs in the relationships that she goes through, and a failed one at that.

What could have built up as a plot and a interesting take on the classic middle class of where small town girls get mixed up in the brouhaha of the urban metropolis and a working woman trying to find her foothold gets all horribly mixed up. We are unsure of the characters and the charades they go through; and with a sketchy screenplay viewers are unable to relate to the characters at anytime. Just as Dolly's character was building up at home of being a mother who is connected (or disconnected) with a thin thread holding everything together that suddenly we are ushered into her office world where she resorts to unfair practices to make ends meet even selling the household jewellery ion needed to fund her pleasures and guilt and even the EMIT of the house. The dichotomy in her character never really comes out. Character formation does not happen at anytime since the scenes do not hold up and connect. Even a character like Kaajal seems to be unsure about herself and there is a contradiction that plays here. She is happy in her space and yet finds solace by falling into relationships and relationships where she is not sure of the consequence. A problem of character building. Even a wonderful character actor like Neelima Azim could not save it; just as her backstory was building up, she was bumped off. A helpless Amir Bashir or a Vikrant Massey aren't enough to lift the film from the ordinary. Some characters like Kubra Sait and her DJ boyfriend, and the boyfriend's cousin brother (a social activist), and the builder nexus all add to the lack of veracity and do not help the plot. Even Alankrita's earlier sojourn Lipstick under... had similar issues and on the personal front the movie was misuse of some wonderful characters like Ratna Pathak, Konkana etc. to name a few.

In here, the screenplay needed more time to plan and that showed in the characters that needed more screen time to build themselves and finally scenes had to hold a little longer for audience to understand and relate. At the end it remans an effort which at best can be termed average and therefore inadequate in verity.        

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