Laapataa Ladies is beautiful cinema!.. A simple story told using simple lived-in characters, it weaves strong and important messages in off-the-cuff, humorous remarks.. Thereby delivering undiluted, bitter truths with a spoon of entertainment honey.
Written by Biplab Goswami, with dialogue and screenplay by Sneha Desai and Divyanidhi Sharma, the movie is directed by Kiran Rao.. She takes the same route taken by Vidhu Vinod Chopra in 12th Fail – unobtrusive direction with great flourishes and fewer flashes.. and letting the characters tell the story. The result is fabulous.. Takes me back to the good old days of Hrishikesh Mukherjee and basu Chatterjee.
The whole movie is extremely well cast by Romil Modi. All major characters are almost fresh faces, except Inspector Manohar (a chameleon-esque Ravi Kishan) and Dubeyji (by Durgesh ‘Panchayat ka Bankaras’ Kumar). I must definitely mention Phool (Nitanshi Goel), Deepak (Sparsh Srivastav), Jaya or Pushpa Rani or Sreya (Pratibha Ranta) and Manju Maai (Chhaya Kadam) – Extremely well done!
Movies like Laapataa Ladies and 12th Fail rekindle my hope in cinema – of its powers and ability to make a difference. It is also very refreshing to see stories and characters stemming from rural India. After all, India still lives in its villages. More of these, please!
Baroda Talkies 