Love in the time of streaming

Chanakya Grover

How do you make a love story stand out in a world where attention spans are decreasing and where megabytes are increasing? Take a city like Mumbai and put in it two young and ambitious souls, who live with their parents. Add to it, a common and cherished dream of one day owning a little house in the city where space is a luxury, and private space, mostly unaffordable. Sprinkle in some dissatisfaction and frustration with the status quo. Pour in a twisted employer-employee relationship, a chance encounter and a bit of hormones. Whisk it with a housing scheme meant only for married couples, and transfer the batter to a blender filled with practicality, insecurity and scheming. Place the blended mix in an oven of morality, and heat it up with some real emotions and a familiar Indian wedding set-up. What you get is Netflix’s first original Hindi film Love per Square Foot, which was released only on Netflix recently.

Directed by actor-writer Anand Tiwari and produced under Ronnie Screwvala’s new banner RSVP, this movie marks Netflix’s entry into India’s movie distribution and exhibition arena, which has so far been dominated by theatrical releases, movie festivals and TV premiers. But let not the fact that it is a web-only movie fool you into believing that it is any less in terms of its content or scale as compared to a good Bollywood movie.

Written by Anand Tiwari and Sumeet Vyas, both of whom have already made their name in the acting department, Love per Square Foot can boast of a fresh and an interesting story backed by wonderful performances by a stellar cast, which includes Kunal Roy Kapoor, Ratna Pathak Shah, Raghubir Yadav, Supriya Pathak and Gajraj Rao in pivotal roles lead by Vicky Kaushal and Angira Dhar as Sanjay Chaturvedi and Karina D’Souza.

Ranbir Kapoor also makes an important appearance in this movie where the city of Mumbai is not just a backdrop but an important character. Whether it is the packed local trains, crumbling or pigeon-holed houses, or various seaside public places, the movie showcases how space, or the lack of it, influences our thinking and actions and ultimately our relationships. And how, sometimes, space can give you freedom to do what you want but it can also quickly turn into emptiness.

The movie also explores the ever-widening generation gap between children and their parents, and how different their ideas of a comfortable and happy life can be. However, humour has been used in just the right amounts and a laugh or two is always around the corner. The situations, though comical and quirky at times, are believable and relatable. A running time of 133 minutes serves well for the movie but it could have done without a couple of song sequences. Nonetheless, it makes for a breezy watch. So, click along!