Love, Sitara is the kind of movie in which an uncomfortable secret view pops up to say hello at the most inopportune moment. It’s going swimmingly well for fashion designer Sitara (Sobhita Dhulipala) until a blast from the past threatens to derail her upcoming nuptials with the chef Arjun (Rajeev Siddhartha). The discovery – ill-timed for Sitara but well-timed for the plot – strains her dynamic with her family.
The clan clearly worships furtiveness: Sitara’s grandmother (B Jayashree), father Govind (Sanjay Bhutiani), mother Latha (Virginia Rodrigues) and aunt Hema (Sonali Kulkarni) all have something to hide. While that something is earth-shattering for the characters in Vandana Kataria’s movie, viewers might find it hard to keep up with the steady stream of revelations. Love, Sitara was completed in 2021 but has been released on ZEE5 only now.
The 105-minute film takes place mostly in a part of Kerala that is teeming with Hindi speakers. The story begins with a quote that Sitara attributes to “somebody”. The narrative is barely penetrated by the depth of the line from Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel Anne Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
” Sobhita Dhulipala in Love, Sitara. Courtesy RSVP Movies/Absolute Productions/ZEE5. Kataria’s screenplay, co-written with Sonia Bahl, refuses to get swept away by the gush of confessions.
Sitara’s dilemma isn’t mined in any meaningful manner, nor is Arjun’s perfectly .
