‘Scenes from a Situationship’: Raw, vapid, and utterly Gen Z

“Based on a ‘true’ situationship,” a super announces early on in ‘Scenes from a Situationship’, and you quickly realise the single quotes deserve a co-writing credit.

What’s ‘true’ here shapeshifts depending on who’s talking — love, like the charging cables in your house, exists like the tangled mess you keep promising to organise tomorrow.

Available for free on YouTube, the film is serrated indie cinema: likely stitched together from smoke-filled conversations, shared heartbreak, and the mild arrogance of young artistes who insist on reminding you that they are, in fact, young artistes.

And yet, that imperfection is its strange, beating heart. More than a polished, sanitised romance, ‘Situationship’ plays like a frantic video call from your best friend describing the worst date of her life. There will be a second date. There always is.

We open with conversation all too familiar for tables of overpriced cafes: Udit (Vaishnav Vyas) and Tanisha (Shreya Sandilya) nurse drinks and mild disappointment, united in holy situationship-mony by the dating app gods.

Any chance of butterflies dies early, sacrificed to Udit’s rambling “intellectual” monologue about butterflies, ants, and oregano. Tanisha pretends to listen, the way women have since time began.

Let’s be honest: the writing is shaky, the dialogue shakier. The film swings wildly between muddy colour grading and aggressively intimate close-ups. But this rough grammar is also proof the script never landed on a studio desk to be politely murdered.

When Tanisha admits Udit’s ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ or ‘Veer-Zaara’ opener won him a right swipe, he confesses either answer would’ve worked. A casual “women are predictable” confirms he’s not a Ranbir Kapoor playboy fantasy, but every third kurta-clad pseudo-intellectual haunting Tagore Theatre with an unread Kafka paperback.

A smoke break fast-tracks intimacy — Gen Z, after all, wants love delivered in three to five business days, no security deposit.

Icebreakers like “mommy issues or daddy issues?” and “big spoon or little spoon?” precede a bedroom, after which the leads discover the special misery of loving someone you don’t particularly like.

What follows are familiar indie beats: alcohol-soaked parties, dimly-lit “hard” conversations, and a psychedelic sequence that exists solely to make the film “edgy”.

‘Situationship’ works in its quieter moments. Both characters enter adulthood with baggage but no flotation device, their unresolved damage leaking into a relationship that refuses to become one.

Udit announces on the first date that he wants someone he can get bored with, then spends the rest of the runtime begging — emotionally, silently — for a stability that never existed in the first place. The metaphor gets recycled by a friend later, softening its impact — though at this point, I’m nitpicking more than objecting.

Tanisha insists they’re a “thing” — not committed, just exclusive (for now, that is), held together by vibes, disclaimers, and an ever-expanding glossary of labels.

Despite missed cues and uncalled-for depth, the performances hold. Vyas grows on you just as Udit does; Sandilya balances manic-pixie energy with brittle vulnerability.

‘Scenes from a Situationship’ isn’t great, eye-opening cinema. It does not pretend to be, either. It’s an unvarnished snapshot of a generation more spoken about than spoken to, its mess dismissed as trivial — even when it’s quietly devastating.