Suggested Topics :
‘Do Patti’ Review: The ‘Haseen Dillruba’ Multiverse Nobody Asked For
Once the film realises that the twin sister act isn’t clever after all, the story plays the domestic violence and mental health cards so hard that it feels like different plots were written for different moods and seasons.
Director: Shashanka Chaturvedi
Writer: Kanika Dhillon
Cast: Kajol, Kriti Sanon, Shaheer Sheikh, Tanvi Azmi
Streaming on: Netflix
Language: Hindi
Do Patti (“Two Cards”) is what happens when Darlings (2022), Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba (2024) and Judgementall Hai Kya (2019) walk into a bar and get drunk on cheap liquor. It’s the sort of cocktail whose ingredients look doomed on paper. Kriti Sanon plays twin sisters Saumya and Shailee; you can tell they have opposite personalities because Saumya cries a lot and Shailee smokes a lot. Kajol plays a righteous hilltown cop named Vidya “VJ” Jyothi, who is, for funsies, also a lawyer. So VJ spends one half of the film investigating a case in a Haryanvi accent and the second half arguing that same case in court in a non-Haryanvi accent; she has two careers and excels at neither. Watching her single-handedly change the genre (and diction) of Do Patti reminded me of Govinda’s iconic photo album in Raja Babu (1994), where he poses as a politician, policeman, doctor and lawyer.
Television star Shaheer Sheikh plays Dhruv Sood, a rich daddy’s brat who dates the wild sister, marries the homely one, and then becomes a wife-beater so that this hollow romantic thriller can morph into a vacant social drama. There’s also a lethargic alligator that could do with some gator-ade. No, my bad, that was actually Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba. The two movies share a screenwriter, locations, flimsiness parading as pulp fiction, and even a bridge, but the bad underwater CGI of Phir Aayi is replaced by worse mid-air CGI in Do Patti. Parasailing plays a reluctant role here, as do the following tropes: a female victim misleading the cops, an unreliable narrator, flashbacks within flashbacks (the film opens with an accident and cuts to three months prior, where one character narrates the backstory of the twins to another character); and multiple scenes that stay half-complete so that the other half can unfold as a gotcha moment in the climax. At some point, no scene feels complete. The entire film is made up of concealed fragments and musical cues. Life is incomplete. The cosmos is incomplete. Apologies for getting carried away.
If there are twin sisters and one abusive man, the old switcheroo is inevitable. The twist is visible from so far away that it’s like a Great Wall of China sighting from outer space. If anything, it’s an anti-twist. But the film — bless its fragile heart — builds up to the revelation like it’s the second coming of The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Prestige (2006). The way it’s shot, edited and staged suggests that the film is so desperate to outsmart the viewer that it outsmarts itself repeatedly. Every time you see something, chances are you’re seeing something else. Once the film realises that the sister act isn’t clever after all, the story plays the domestic violence and mental health cards so hard that it feels like different plots were written for different moods and seasons. As nice as it is to see a writer get top billing for a film, it’s dismaying to see the tokenism of its themes. Kanika Dhillon has previously done interesting things with mental illness and the toxicity of marriage, but there’s a stream-of-consciousness trope-generator vibe about her recent work.
Since the commentary has to be earned, we see different men — Dhruv, his father, his lawyer, the ghost of the sisters’ father — using the word “aurat” (woman) as a slur. One of them finds out that the judge is a lady and growls: “Aurat? Bh*nch*d”. Another vows, “Dekh lenge inn auraton ko (We will handle these women)”, in an open courtroom. If this is supposed to be an antidote to Kabir Singh (2019) and his masculine ilk, it has the subtlety of a slap. At one point, the monster in Dhruv is unleashed because Saumya keeps asking for a baby, so he brutally assaults her all over the house — the “action” is almost stylised — while a melancholic song scores this scene. I’ve seen abuse fetishised in Hindi movies, but this one is absurd for how oblivious it is.
Another problem is the sheer randomness of the characters. I have many questions. Why is Shailee so evil around Saumya? If a girl doesn’t smoke, can she be rebellious? Can’t she be mean to Saumya without resorting to extreme measures like seducing her husband, wearing the same dress to her wedding and mocking her health? Is one scolding from daddy enough for Dhruv to dump the wild sister? Why is Dhruv’s rage revealed like it’s a Hitchcockian twist? Why is Shailee given a Heer-Ranjha heartbreak ballad in a nightclub? Why does VJ have a subordinate (Brijendra Kala) reduced to a human exposition device? Why does Shailee suddenly empathise with her sister? Were they just pretending to hate each other all along? Why is the courtroom drama so devoid of tension that the music pretends to be dialogue? Why is the message so irresponsible under the garb of gender empowerment? Why does it seem like Netflix is creating an Idiot Cop Universe where the twins might meet Haseen Dillruba’s Rani and Rishu on the run in a future instalment called “Chaar Patti” (four cards)? Where are those incomplete crocodiles when you need them?