Do Patti Is A Dull Film With All The Tricks Showing

<em>Do Patti</em> is sillier than it thinks it is and a lot less smarter than it hopes, culminating eventually as a tightly-coiled PSA that could have been an advertisement.

Ishita+Sengupta

Oct 28, 2024

Promo poster for Do Patti.

IF THERE IS ANYTHING WORSE than a dull film, it is a dull film pretending to be bright. Shashanka Chaturvedi’s Do Patti falls squarely in that category. The Kriti Sanon and Kajol starrer is a sort of outing that unravels with the confidence of a teenager while possessing the intellect of a five-year-old. It is also the kind that cockily eyes everyone only to fall flat on its face when put on the spot. Do Patti is sillier than it thinks it is and a lot less smarter than it hopes, culminating eventually as a tightly-coiled PSA that could have been an advertisement.

The stilted aesthetic probably has something to do with the fact that Netflix, the streamer platforming the film, encourages a certain palette stamped across its roster. Or maybe it is tied to the detail that Chaturvedi, the director, has an extensive history in advertising. His involvement might also be the cause for the absurd filmmaking in Do Patti where there is a dissonance between context and subtext, and emotions are packaged in shiny boxes. A ghastly scene of domestic abuse is scored to a generic sad song as if what we are watching on screen is a woman pining for her lover and not a man kicking his wife on her stomach. Characters are established with simplistic binaries and they are depicted with sweeping shorthands. A free independent woman is seen smoking incessantly while the sheltered, domesticated one is portrayed as the meek being, functional only when on medications. Such moralistic brazenness would put Homi Adajania’s Cocktail to shame but Do Patti is its own comparison.

On a surface level, Chaturvedi’s directorial debut is a worst-case execution of a story that includes arcs of sibling rivalry, domestic abuse, abusive love, and revenge. On a deeper level, however, it is a more troubling perpetuation of writer and producer Kanika Dhillon’s preoccupation with women outsmarting the law. The contentious relationship makes sense on paper given the extent to which legality, especially in a country like India, is designed against women. The singular act of a female protagonist bypassing punishment then makes a larger statement of structural defiance. With Haseen Dillruba (2021), Dhillon had inflected novelty in the premise by using love as the alibi. This year, the sequel returned with more confidence and less conviction and by Do Patti which completes the trilogy of cops getting overly invested in cases only to be outfoxed by women, the assurance is too much and the writing is in tatters.

This time it is a woman pitted against women. Vidya Jyothi (Kajol with a Haryanvi accent more inconsistent than my freelance salary) is a freshly posted cop at a fictional town called Devipur. Before we can gather our thoughts about her, she tells us in a voice-over that she is the daughter of a judge and a lawyer. Her father believed in the word of law and her mother stood by the spirit of law. Although she abides by her father (she had jailed even her brother), the inclusion of the backstory insinuates that she would alter her stance. To make that happen, are the two twin sisters- Saumya and Shailee (Kriti Sanon). Saumya is the timid one and Shailee is the free spirited one (of course she has a tattoo on her back). They fought since childhood with Shailee nursing grudges against her sibling for taking things away from her. Therefore, when she returns many years later to find that Saumya is dating an adventure sport enthusiast and entrepreneur, Dhruv Sood (Shaheer Sheikh), Shailee is determined to steal him from her.

With this begins fresh rounds of flirting, some bad VFX paragliding, two women fighting over one man and ultimately Dhruv choosing to marry Saumya. Trouble begins again as Dhruv turns out to be nothing like he was thought to be (think Jasmeet K. Reen’s Darlings). As violence simmers in the background, Saumya and Shailee continue fighting in the foreground and Vidya Jyothi gets sucked into the case like nothing else exists.

It may seem like a straightforward plot with a twist at the end but there are more questions than answers in Do Patti. For one, in a film with three insufferable protagonists, it remains a mystery why they want to be together as badly as they do. There is also Vidya Jyothi’s fixation with Saumya which is depicted without any context. Why would a police officer keep going back to help a stranger to the point of cornering her to lodge a case? If gender is the only reason then it adds up to the empty writing of the film (Do Patti does have a scene where Dhruv’s father, a powerful politician, curses on knowing that the judge in his son’s case is a woman).

In many ways, this ridiculous moment distils the facile logic the film stands on where gender politics, sibling relationships and portrayal of abuse are portrayed as blanket abstractions, carrying none of the complexities they demand. The actors are in for the ride. Kajol is boisterous and unconvincing as the cop with momentary flashes of comic timing. Sanon, also the producer, is tragically one-note. Of course, this has everything to do with the writing of Do Patti but the misstep feels aggravated by the fact that being creatively involved, she had a say in the process. As Saumya she cries buckets and as Shailee she flicks her hair and stares seductively. Her decision to do the film comes across as a desperate attempt to showcase her range although it does anything but that.

Of late, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell one Dhillon film from another (Do Patti even opens at the same bridge where the climax of Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba was shot). It is not necessarily a bad thing, except in her case, the tricks are showing. The artifice is too much and the craft has been revealed to be limited. In such a case, it ceases to matter that she holds her cards close as she does; the game is set up to be lost.

Do Patti is currently streaming on Netflix.