Darlings
Might contain spoilers.
A difficult movie to watch, not least because it tells a 20– or 30-minute story over more than two hours. Worse, it’s amateurish and lacking in subtlety or nuance, with a frustratingly dimwitted protagonist and an antagonist who barely stops short of twirling his moustache. It has its moments—mainly thanks to the always-reliable Shefali Shah—but this is by no means a clever black comedy, only a grim and broadly-sketched portrait.
Alia Bhatt fares poorly. Her accent is even more inauthentic and forced than in Gangubai Kothiawadi a few months prior. There are flashes of a better performance, but it’s inadequate overall. Vijay Varma acquits himself tolerably as a cipher whose entire description consists of the word ‘abusive’, and the supporting cast are reasonably good. I was delighted to see Pooja Swaroop as the beautician.
It’s very disappointing that Badru doesn’t leave Hamza on the tracks in the end. I don’t see how it would have made her like him at all: he’s an alcoholic abusing a defenceless woman while she’s a victim of abuse defending herself against a man who declared he would not leave her in peace. At any rate, on a tangential note, it’s nice to see policemen who aren’t entirely unwilling to help, for a change.