'Laapata Ladies' Review | A portrayal of satire laughs in a veiled society

"Laapata Ladies"  released on 'Netflix' is a refreshing ride that takes you to a time where mobile phones were a luxury, where speaking no more than a few words in english was an act of pride and where losing one's newly wed wife was as easy as losing a coin in the pocket. The film is set in in the year 2001 around rural villages of Madhya Pradesh where more the dowry ,greater the groom is to be expected, where highly educated girls are seen as halley's comet and where a woman speaking the name of her husband is an offensive act. Kiran Rao created this parody of societal norms while taking a toll on governmental ways of operating things as well. Rao took all of this fuss and created a cinematic splendour without lighting any controversies around it making it one of best comedy too to watch this year.

The story goes around as two newly wedded brides gets lost and distanced from their respective grooms and all this took place just because of a simple yet old fashioned ritual of wearing a veil. Biplab Goswami and Sneha Desai added their magic to story and screenplay where the whole aura of the story depicts a veil wore by the society in the starting as orthodox beliefs were a fashion and towards the end the veil gets lifted as justice is served and upliftment of the characters is seen. The whole cinematic experience too will make you feel the air of 2001's Madhya Pradesh as captured by Vikash Nowlakha with the direction of Rao. The scenes shot resonates of "Peepli Live" which was also produced by Kiran Rao. The emotions of the scenes are otherwise brought to live by Ram Sampath with his music score of describing the situations. After "Dhobhi Ghat" Rao yet again proved to focus on details as to consider that people used to board trains midway tracks or what types of phones were used or what types of posters would be present outside theatres.

The whole cast of "Laapata Ladies" including Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel, Sparsh Shrivastava, Chhaya Kadam and Ravi Kishan as leads did a job, no one in the film fraternity could have thought of casting a better cast than this. Divya Nidhi Sharma moulded the characters in such a way that each of them represent a social defect present in our society while keeping the balance by creating characters as 'Jaya/Pushpa Rani' and 'Manju Maai' who acted as reforms to these defects. Sparsh Shrivastava went all in with his emotion range in this one and with Rao besides making it clear to even focus on the local dialects and accent which makes him water and Rao being the mould giving him a perfect shape for the character. Special mention for Chhaya Kadam as 'Manju Maai' as she presented a phenomenal work and her character too that is so well written that a woman present in such a time and age refuses to what she refers as fraud of the society and deciding to live on her own terms. In a scene she explains to 'Phool' about the orthodox norms of the society by saying ' ee desh mein ladki logon ke saath hazaaron saalo se ek fraud chal rha hai, ooka naam hai bhale ghar ki bahu beti' which clearly makes her and 'Jaya/Pushpa Kumari' the epitome of a liberal citizen. 'Ravi Kishan' as always never fails to dissapoint when it comes to quality content and as comedy is something he seems to know like his right hand.

It is great to see that finally big production houses like 'Aamir Khan Productions' are working with such great talents to produce top notch quality content rather than casting some privileged silver spoons to create something like "Archies" which also proves that a necessarily high budget film does not always mean a hit and low budget film does not mean poor quality content. It only takes some talented work to be applauded on a platform like 'Netflix' which has presented works like "Archies" and now "Laapata Ladies" for the public to clearly decide that what kind of artists and content must be pushed forward like these Ladies have presented.