Love Storiyaan Review: A Mixed Bag of Happily-Ever-Afters

Directors: Hardik Mehta, Vivek Soni, Shazia Iqbal, Akshay Indikar, Archana Phadke, Collin D’Cunha

Number of episodes: 6

Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video

For an anthology positioned as a Valentine’s Day release, Love Storiyaan has a lot going for it. Firstly, it’s non-fiction. The six handpicked narratives revolve around real-life couples featured on the Instagram handle India Love Project, a humans-of-romance-themed initiative (by journalists Priya Ramani, Samar Halarnkar and Niloufer Venkataraman) that platforms clutter-breaking stories of inclusivity, courage and diversity. A Marxist falls for the popular blogger he trolls; two rival radio jockeys connect through a phone prank conceived by a visually impaired listener; it’s love at first sight for an IIT graduate and Dalit activist at a Narmada Bachao Andolan rally; an Afghan student falls for an Indian student in Russia because she resembles actress Rekha; a trans man meets his soulmate, a trans woman, through a helpline. As a viewer, you constantly remind yourself that the implausibility of these tales reveal more about your own relationship with the pop-culturization of love. This internal conflict is refreshing.

Secondly, these are the sort of everyday vignettes that inspire the escapist fictions of Bollywood love stories – a subversion spotlit by the fact that this comes from Dharmatic Entertainment, the OTT wing of Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. The title itself refers to the much-trolled Hinglish term used by lyricist Amitabh Bhattarcharya in the song ‘Kesariya’ from Brahmastra (2022). Given the ‘scripts’ are so foolproof, then, Love Storiyaan finds itself tackling the cinematic equivalent of first-world problems: When it’s hard to go wrong, is it easier to go right? How does one elevate a tailormade truth? How to film reality that already looks like imagination? 

As it turns out, these are tricky questions. Letting the story shine requires a fine balance of restraint and treatment. There’s also the matter of trust – it’s not just about the couples feeling comfortable with the filmmakers, it’s also about the makers trusting the inherent gravity of the couples. These are people who’ve already found each other and themselves; what we see is a retelling, not a telling. Consequently, at times, the embellishments try too hard to create a sense of myth. 

Greeting Card Filmmaking

Hardik Mehta’s A Unsuitable Girl is an example. The angle is charming: A Delhi-based divorcee and a Malayali journalist beat the odds to fall in love – until they face the resistance of the woman’s daughters from a previous marriage. But the designs are too visible. It's not just the performative awareness of the camera, the dialogue-ish exchanges, or the corny dramatic recreations (which bring to mind Deepa Bhatia’s over-staged First Act). The narrative device of a road trip – which exists to give fullness to the backstory – robs the real-world love of its spontaneity. There are shots and cuts and scenes, even when the camera is only following them. Staging non-fiction (or docudramas) isn't wrong, but it must inform the rhythms of the people being filmed. The cosmetic result is what I call Greeting Card Filmmaking, where it starts to feel like a quasi-doc ad spot (featuring dogs saving the day) playing during an interval of a romcom. 

Ditto for Vivek Soni’s Love On Air, a story rooted in the interfaith upheavals of an radio-jockey couple in Shillong. Despite the openness of their struggle – social stigma, parental aversion, addiction – it often feels like the film crafts a happily-ever-after out of nothing. It nudges the family in a certain direction through questions (the son seems to have memorised a few) and, again, a curated journey. This road trip involves surprising the sweet listener who brought them together, but the reunion unfolds like one of those sponsored make-a-wish clips. There’s also an aspect-ratio-widening gimmick – the past morphing into the future. It’s effective, but manipulative. The makers want a particular reaction, and it’s this wanting that hinders an entire history of longing. 

Best in Show

In contrast, Shazia Iqbal’s Homecoming – the best of the six – acknowledges the uncertainty of such moments. As per the title, the journey at its core is organic; it reveals an unrehearsed pursuit of belonging. A Kolkata-based couple who met in Dhaka during the Bangladesh Liberation War return to see their hometown, Chandpur, after decades. (The catchy accordion-and-strings score almost tempts you to view them as future versions of the on-the-run Barfi! (2012) couple). They had to leave the country after all sorts of social rejections: The woman, Farida, was disowned by her brother for marrying outside her religion. Yet, now in their 70s and still in unapologetic love, there is no resentment (left) towards their past. The camera trails them across borders, revisiting college halls and familiar streets, and then finally, going to meet Farida’s brother. It’s a beautifully observed moment – the frail old man is still angry, but he doesn’t react the way you (are conditioned to) expect him to. His consciousness of a film crew is written into the story. Before leaving, she tears up while speaking of the futility of family grudges. The documentary then states that a proper reunion happens the next day when the brother visits Farida at her hotel, but they request it not be filmed. 

This, in itself, is an ode to the legitimacy of their emotions; you don’t have to watch their closure to feel it. The makers trust us to know the people they were through the validations of who they are; the sight of timeworn – as opposed to timeless – partners implies volumes, without the crutch of staged flashbacks. The tell-don’t-show tone allows the viewer to experience it through their own lens of storytelling – whether it’s through the proximity of life or the derivations of art. For instance, I was moved by association; by knowing my own partner, her Kolkata-based parents, their Bangladeshi heritage, their reading of home. Even the one period recreation – a Bengali song performance – is used economically here, to link the romance of nostalgia with the nostalgia of romance.

Past Imperfect

The same can’t be said for Akshay Indikar’s Raah Sangharsh Ki, an intercaste epic that bristles with the social agency of love. The unlikely couple is defined by their differences as well as a shared desire to empower the world around them. Their chemistry is complex: A passion for activism fuels their passion for each other. But the documentary leans heavily on recreations of their younger days, immersing itself in the spectacle of the love story rather than the drama of their companionship. The content feels personal, but the form looks studied. It doesn’t help that each of these segments opens with a snapshot of what is to follow, like a promo before the actual film; it’s a bit disorienting, especially because it reduces their realities to a form of reality television. The few times Raah Sangharsh Ki stays with the middle-aged couple, letting them emerge and breathe, you get a better idea of their subdued compatibility. Her strong personality and his gentle indulgences fly to the fore.

Archana Phadke’s Faasley (“distances”) isn't a patch on her documentary feature, About Love (2020), which was a poignant meditation on the intergenerational tissues of her own family. But the reenactments in Faasley – a portrait of the grit of romance – reflect the mental landscape of the cross-border marriage between an Afghan man and a small-town Indian woman. The ‘foreigner’ grows up as a Bollywood fan, so their memories find an excuse to be filmy (including a giddy snow dance). The film relies more on archival footage, photographs and unobtrusive editing to reveal a remarkable journey across time and tide. They embrace the burden of being a story, turning it into a lived-in privilege. It’s hard to not be taken by the unvarnished awkwardness of the couple. More importantly, the visual flourishes don't hijack the longevity – the post-credits autumn – of this story. 

The film focuses on the bureaucratic and emotional hurdles: Endless separations, an undocumented stint in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, cultural adaptability, societal change, and a reverse of gender norms. The tiny touches work: A shot opens with him flying the kite while she holds the thread reel, but when her voice speaks of his decision to be a stay-at-home dad, she takes over the kite. The anecdotes, too – particularly one that narrates her risky dash to war-torn Kabul – bridges the gap between political potboilers and classic love stories. 

Full Circle

Similarly, Collin D’Cunha’s Love Beyond Labels bridges the gap between the making of an identity and the making of history. It charts the journey of Tista Das and Dipan Chakraborty, the transgender couple behind Kolkata’s first rainbow marriage. Their cultural significance as individuals, however, does not overwhelm the plurality of their love. Compared to the other parts, the flashbacks here are fairly ornate – childhood dream sequences, poetic voice-overs, and vivid depictions of body dysmorphia. But this style works, because it mirrors their psychological evolution. The recreations reveal not only how society views them as exotic misfits, but also how they see themselves by seeking refuge in art and literature. In contrast, the real-life portions of an adult Tista and Dipan are muted, with a fly-on-the-wall, no-frills approach. Even their interview happens in a public park, as if to normalize their existence and suggest that – after years of loving their way into public life – this is who they see themselves as now: An ordinary couple with an extraordinary responsibility. This juxtaposition of style works, because towards the end, they aspire for the exaggerations of youth without discounting their maturity. They come full circle without erasing the space inside it. 

Overall, beyond the hit-and-miss mainstreaming of Love Storiyaan, what remains – as with life itself – is the candidness of human connection. It's the off-the-cuff gestures and in-between moments, when the camera stops rolling and starts listening. A woman schooling her upper-caste husband about the political incorrectness of his joke. A 70-something man instinctively reaching out to wipe his wife’s tears at her ancestral home. Two radio-jockeys – and spouses – starting the day with testy banter on air. Old parents arguing about the details of their daughter’s wedding. A director breaking the fourth wall to tease his subject about her ‘dominating’ nature. A husband blushing at his wife’s answer to a three-wishes question. It's like watching the Dil Toh Pagal Hai (1997) title-credits montage, where the formal poses of actual couples blend into the shyness of their outtakes. You remember the improvisations of love. The rest, of course, is mere story-dressing.