Love, Sitara Cuddlesome  Ode To That Overactive Beast Known As Dysfunctional Family

At one point in Vandana  Kataria’s sophomore directorial Love, Sitara , the  protagonist Sitara(Sobhita  Dhulipala) tells her beleaguered fiancé, “You better rethink about marrying me. Hamara  family bahot zyada dysfunctional  hai.”

Bahot  zyada dysfunctional is like saying, bahot zyada functional. There is no quantitative measure  for  happiness/unhappiness.  Quoting Leo Tolstoy—“All happy families are  the same, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way”—Sitara sets the  elusively mood  of  joy and melancholy at  a tonally exhausting pitch  in  this well-intended  if  a tad  selfimportant family drama set in Kerala and  featuring actors who seem authentic in their cultural placement, if somewhat displaced  in their emotional predilection.

Director Vandana  Kartaria’s first film Noblemen was a grim and shocking reminder of the depravity and intolerance that often underlines the well-aligned smooth operation of elitist educational institutions.  This time  in Love,Sitara she is on less slippery ground.  This sort of a  emotionally evicted  family trying to  seek an anchor late in their lives, is  not  a tough  directorial  task.

 But  it isn’t easy either, unless you have the right cast. Ms Kataria has the right  faces. The culturally  correct  postures . But the actors and the  Kerala location do not have the  ingrained  authenticity  of   Manoraganthal, the Kerala-based series coincidentally also on the same  digital platform Zee5.

Although  Love, Sitara lacks the emotional  density  of  several other Kerala-based  film on dysfunctional families, it gets by on the strength  of  a swig and  sparkle. As is the wont in matriarchal  films,  the women are much stronger , sometimes too much  so. And except for  Sitara’s  fiancé Arjun(played with restrain and  dignity  by  Rajeev Siddhartha) the men come across as sketchy (offsetting the women who are often screechy) .

 I for one wanted  to know more about Majeed(Rijul Ray) the  village do-gooder who has the urge to be anywhere and everywhere where  he is  needed in  a crisis, and even when he is not needed.Majid is one  of the characters we  come close  to getting close to. But somehow the  director  chooses  to keep us distanced  from the characters which  could have been an advantage if the screenplay had allowed some of the more prominent  characters  to grow.

Among the gallery of women, the grandmother played  by B Jayshree is  borderline  caricatural.  Sonali Kulkarni stands out as Latha the black sheep  of the  chaotic family. Even when her character’s scenes get wobbly(for instance when  her affair with  her sister’s  husband is exposed) Sonali takes care to make sure her character  doesn’t trip over.

 Love, Sitara is by no yardstick a bad film. On the contrary it is perky and it  bubbles over with an emphatic ebullience, some of it misplaced. There is plenty here to like, though.The Kerala household is captured in postures  of sunniness to offset  the protagonist’s chronic sullenness. The screenwriting needed more  brio  in the confrontational scenes. But the dialogues are credible  and sometimes  very funny.