Director: Shirsha Guha Thakurta
Writers: Suprotim Sengupta, Eisha Chopra, Amrita Bagchi
Cast: Vidya Balan, Pratik Gandhi, Ileana D’Cruz, Sendhil Ramamurthy
Duration: 137 minutes
Available in: Theatres
A woman tells her husband of 12 years, “You don’t realise how much you miss something until you have it again.” The man blushes. She’s talking about the greasy Chinese food they’re digging into. The ‘double meaning’ is that she’s referring to their marriage, too – they’ve had sex after ages, and sparks are flying again. The hunger is back. Their familiarity resurfaces as newness. But I found myself grinning at the triple meaning. She could well be alluding to our relationship with the fine actors playing this couple: Vidya Balan as Kavya, and Pratik Gandhi as Anirudh. Balan isn’t as prolific as before. The electric turn in Madgaon Express (2024) aside, Gandhi’s been spare since Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020). Watching them together in Do Aur Do Pyaar is a reminder of this absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder line. It’s not until you see how shapeless their chemistry is – how easy their presence is in a film that trusts their emotional intelligence – that you realise how much you miss them. It’s not just the characters, but also the performers whose familiarity finds a language of newness.
Shirsha Guha Thakurta’s Do Aur Do Pyaar is based on Azazel Jacobs’ The Lovers (2017), a romantic dramedy about a middle-aged couple who start cheating on their extramarital lovers…with each other. The premise is fascinating, of course, because it sends up the very notions of monogamy and companionship. The story isn’t that two spouses are adulterous; that’s the default setup. The story is the irony of the role reversal: Their adultery is morphing into a sibling of marriage. The gimmick is that the seemingly normal idea of a husband and wife enjoying each other’s company and bodies is now an illicit one. It’s that a passionate long-term marriage is as exciting – and unnerving – as a passionate extramarital affair. The refreshing thing about Do Aur Do Pyaar is its cultural translation. The film is adapted to an urban-Indian setting without softening the frankness of its themes.
The treatment never judges the couple for their situation. The tone is matter-of-fact and dry for the most part: This is their routine, this is their marriage, and it is what it is. It’s not the morality or deceit that’s highlighted. If anything, there’s a sense of respect – and mutual sensitivity – about the way they conduct their double lives. At times, ‘cheating’ doesn’t even sound like the right term. This is evident from the smokescreen the film opens with: Two ordinary couples exist in different parts of the city, until you see a partner each coming home to an autopilot marriage. The reality-perception interplay brings to mind Hardik Mehta’s The Affair, a short film that creates the illusion of two middle-class lovers cheating on their spouses – only to reveal that they’re actually a married couple snatching a few moments of privacy before returning to a cramped house.
The alterations in Do Aur Do Pyaar are both entertaining and sensible. It starts with the slightly corny title (“Two times two is love”), which hints at the emotional permutations of love. The couple here is in their late thirties: Anirudh is a Bengali businessman (he has a ‘cork’ factory; fortunately, the puns are not excessive), and Kavya is a Tamilian dentist. They share a bed, car and apartment in Mumbai, a city that often reframes togetherness as a need and feasibility as a feeling. Given their own conventional careers, it’s fitting that they are ‘dating’ artists; it’s the ultimate normie dream.
Kavya’s boyfriend, Vikram (Sendhil Ramamurthy), is a rugged NRI photographer from New York. In a way, she’s with the fantasy version of her husband; the Anirudh she fell for was a musician in college – until adulthood knocked on his door. Ani’s girlfriend, Nora (Ileana D’Souza), is an upcoming actress; she is mercurial, needy and everything that makes him feel seen. I like that the “others” in this foursome aren’t demonised. Vikram and Nora are protagonists of their own individual movies, where free-spirited artists seek stability and maturity in their partners. Even though Kavya and Ani might be phases in their broader journey, not once does the film downplay their truth. Their intent is never shallow, and their agency, no lesser.
The backstory isn’t random either. You can see why Kavya and Ani are separated but not quite. She eloped with him as a youngster, not only risking family estrangement but also inviting the crushing pressure to be special and happy. The implication is that, over the years, the two have been weighed down by the burden of being a story; it’s what tore them apart, yet it’s also the reason they haven’t divorced. It’s almost like they’re ashamed to (officially) call it quits after defying the world to get married. Once they had nothing left to defy, their love lost its mutinous identity.
That’s why the decision to have a funeral reignite their feelings – as opposed to a son’s visit in the original film – is a smart one. Kavya’s grandfather’s funeral brings them face to face with everything – a domineering father, a patriarchal household, a small-minded town – that once fuelled their romantic rebellion. It raises visions of the purpose that once unified them. There’s a charming scene at a bar, where they bond like two old classmates having a reunion. They revert to addressing each other by their surnames. Kavya praises Ani for his life choices as if she’s just learnt about them, and Ani compliments Kavya for hers. The point of this moment is verbal exposition; it’s to give the viewers a sense of who they were. But they also sound like strangers remembering and rediscovering each other at once. Even their awkwardness is laced with comfort.
The film lives in the little details. The first shot of Kavya and Vikram features them flirting behind the monsoon-glazed window of an Irani cafe; it’s a striking nod to Titanic’s famous steamy-windows scene, with more or less the same subtext. (When their flirting gets too much, the old Parsi owner shoots a quick give-them-the-bill glance at his waiter). When Kavya silently brushes her teeth next to her husband at night, she pauses at their reflection for a beat – a nice callback to the opening scene, where Vikram compares love to toothpaste and romanticizes the ‘intimate’ ritual of brushing teeth together. Then there’s Anirudh’s Clark-Kent-styled tic of fiddling with his glasses. At some level, it feels like he subliminally wears loose frames so that Kavya’s muscle memory takes over and she adjusts them on his nose.
There’s the couple’s habit of melting into different spaces of the same room, car or apartment. There’s the amusing link between domesticity to desire: The very Bengali Anirudh uses the word “posto” as foreplay; “Chicken 65” becomes a sexual innuendo; Kavya even compares his orgasm-face to the crescendo of a pressure cooker. Kavya’s fractured equation with her father – as well as its moving resolution – evokes shades of Gehraiyaan (2022). When a massive showdown happens, it’s against the soundscape of Diwali; the outdoor explosions amplify the indoor implosions.
The final act of the film is tricky, because it teeters on the brink of melodrama. The problem is that there’s no absolute outcome. It’s stretched by nature, and the reckoning – of realising that their love always thrived as a reaction, not an action – is difficult. As a result, the climax unfolds like an inverted image of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), where the characters must pay for their transgressions by ‘earning’ a happily ever after. There are a lot of tears and shaky-camera gestures and lyrical accusations, but the actors (how good a crier is Vidya Balan?) just about pull it off.
Perhaps it’s because the film – despite its social inclinations – never shies away from conveying the toxicity of their marriage. Kavya and Ani are better versions of themselves with their respective partners: Kavya is more ambitious and hopeful around Vikram, and Nora encourages Ani to take up music again, a dream he had sacrificed to handle the ‘duties’ of married life. She even sends him a piano; it becomes a point of contention because he knows no other iteration of himself anymore. He is almost afraid of erasing the conventions of his masculinity.
Most movies might have staged the affairs as the real love stories, as antidotes to the shackles of stunted matrimony. But Do Aur Do Pyaar takes no shortcuts; it commits to the road less travelled. The ending isn’t perfect, but it comes close to confessing that this is no aspirational tale – it’s a film about compromised people making peace with their defects and choices. It’s a story about reluctant spouses and former lovers trying to survive the coercions of storytelling. And when all else fades, it’s a platform for Vidya Balan and Pratik Gandhi to hit the sweet spot between a feel-good tragedy and a feel-bad comedy.