PremiumLove Storiyaan review - Bittersweet journey through love's turbulent waters with a slight endurance test
The Karan Johar-produced Love Storiyaan is a documentary series that shows that amidst life's ebb and flow, love endures.
Last Updated: 12.17 AM, Feb 14, 2024
This touching documentary series honours the triumph of love over adversity by retelling six real-life love stories.
Listening to love stories is something that people will never stop enjoying. If they do, then I believe they have some sort of superiority complex or are just bad listeners. The narration style significantly influences the impact of the story. Just like how Love Storiyaan takes you on that journey, which is more or less a testing period for sure.
Conceptualised by Somen Mishra, the series consists of six love stories of real-life couples, and it's nothing more than a full-blown thriller Bollywood drama. Each story is directed by six individual directors, namely Hardik Mehta, Vivek Soni, Shazia Iqbal, Akshay Indikar, Archana Phadke, and Collin D’Cunha.
The series does start on a high note, with two really good stories anchoring the documentary as a whole. The first one, An Unsuitable Girl, by Hardik Mehta, is about Aekta, a Delhi-based writer, who gave love another go with Ullekh, a Kerala-based journalist. But she encountered resistance from her daughters, who were the last people she expected. After some time had passed, they finally took a family vacation to Ullekh's hometown. While narrating the story, both Aekta and Ullekh, who are actually writers, share, with pride, their relationship with finesse and in an intriguing way. This gives their love story an intriguing touch where both talk about the opposition and the transition, which eventually becomes fruitful.
The second story, Love on the Air, is my favourite of the bunch. Vivek Soni, known for his work on Meenakshi Sundareshwar, helms the project. From beginning to end, the short is a complete package about two radio hosts from different stations, Nicholas and Rajani, who fall in love in the beautiful highlands of Meghalaya. They embark on a journey with their son to see the one who brought them together. Every part of the story keeps you hooked, and mainly it's because of the narration.
With Homecoming, we do see a quirky couple 75 years of age, and their mushy romance faced with hardships deserves your undivided attention. This poignant episode, which Shazia Iqbal directed, follows a 75-year-old couple named Sunit and Farida as they travel back to Bangladesh. They had originally fallen in love in 1971, during the height of the Liberation Movement, but eventually decided to settle in India. Their story takes a notch because of the chemistry the real-life couple even shares now. Everything looks organic, and why won't it? It's about a couple who dared to fall in love at a time when the world was changing altogether.
After the third episode, where the first two were about finding love against all odds, and the third one was about leaving your home country for love and finding a full circle, Love Storiyaan takes a deeper turn in the fourth short. In Raah Sangharsh Ki by Akshay Indikar, an enchanting tale of love and perseverance unfolds as Rahul, a former student of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) who now advocates for the Adivasi people, and Subhadra, a Dalit activist, recount their shared love for social welfare work at the grassroots level in the rural areas of Madhya Pradesh. The maturity of the love story's narration stems from the fact that it's about two strong individuals who are poles apart from each other. While the narrative style may not appeal to everyone at first glance, it offers a story that delves into unexpected depths.
Archana Phadke's Faasley was one of the more difficult episodes to sit through because of its narrative. It was the shortest of all, and actually, that was a better thing. To be honest, I didn't understand the story properly, but I got the gist of it. It's about Dhanya, an Indian, and Homayon, an Afghan, who tell their love story as they go from the Soviet Union to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. They overcome their religious and cultural differences and fall in love, creating a relationship that endures through the difficult times.
Last but definitely not least is the cute and hard-hitting love story Love Beyond Labels, directed by Collin D’Cunha. In the episode, while Dipan is making a unique anniversary present for Tista, the trans couple is in the midst of Kolkata, sharing their stories of self-discovery and love beyond genders. The story's narration about two beautiful individuals is so heartwarming and transparent that it gave me some sort of comfort while watching it. Moreover, I think without Tista and Dipan's love story, the documentary series would have been incomplete, so to speak.
Overall, if I have to summarise Love Storiyaan overall, the series does test your patience and may not be something that everyone will enjoy. Even though I have nothing against real-life couples, it's the treatment that slightly took a backseat. If you watch it without a Karan Johar touch, the love stories are amazing and unimaginable. It's probably a way of showing the younger generations that love stories sustain themselves against all odds, and it's the couple's willpower that makes the relationship work. Love stories are not always perfect, and every day is not like Valentine's Day, but it is up to both partners to believe that with compatibility, love, and respect, relationships can become easier over time.
The retelling through fictional characters does become a little funny for a few shorts; however, it doesn't take away the charm of the narration by the real-life couples, who are truly, madly, deeply, and irrevocably in love with each other.
Love Storiyaan's central theme is the unwavering power of love, although some stories may be difficult to endure. The documentary series, in which each couple tells their own story, is indeed a celebration of love's capacity to triumph over adversity.