Do Aur Do Pyaar Movie Review: A poignant meditation on love and marriage

Love is usually explored in popular culture with whatever happened leading up to it. It is seen as a trophy, as the means to cleanse you of suffering. That way, there is a burden of fantasy attached to it; love seems to offer a resolution. However, through all of this, it is not given any expiry date. If there is a tangible moment in time when two people define their feelings for each other as extraordinary, then when does it cease to be that way? Who breaks the bubble of the ‘happily ever after’? Do Aur Do Pyaar lingers on such questions, and delves deeper into flawed individuals, beyond the often-projected perfect exteriors. The film is not interested in looking at smiling family portraits but the marks that they leave behind on empty walls.

Director: Shirsha Guha Thakurta

Cast: Vidya Balan, Pratik Gandhi, Ileana D’Cruz, Sendhil Ramamurthy

It features Anirudh (Pratik Gandhi) and Kavya (Vidya Balan) as a couple who have been married for 12 years. Coming from different parts of the country, they had to elope in order to get married. Now, after all those years, the dreams woven together by young hearts have begun to fizzle. Love is ultimately not enough, it seems. For them it stays hidden, often crawling up on the bed in the space between the two or making its absence known through eyes that lack any spark when they meet. Hence, both of them seek companions outside their marriage in order to fill the emptiness in their hearts. Anirudh has been seeing Nora (Ileana D’Cruz) for two years and finds comfort in her presence. Similarly, Kavya latches on to photographer Vikram (Sendhil Ramamurthy) as they make plans to live together at a sea facing flat in Mumbai. The exciting rhythm of these new-found romances is broken when Kavya’s grandfather dies and she has to visit her native place, Ooty. To her surprise, Anirudh decides to tag along.