When after watching Jagmohan Mundhra’s Provoked at a special private screening with Aishwarya Rai in 2006, I had turned to her to ask how she looked so convincing as a victim of domestic violence, she had smiled wanly and replied, “Because I’ve been through this.”
The guy she was dating her had pushed her down the stairs once, just like Saumya Sood’s husband in Do Patti, a crackling hissing free-falling thriller-styled fire-and-ice drama about twin sisters who resolve to take the lout in their own hands when the law fails.
I don’t wants to give away too much of Kannika Dhillon’s nimbly written script. Suffice it to say, Do Patti has its highs(the skygliding scenes help) and lows. While the “twist” in the climax is like blowing smoke rings with an extinguished cigarette , the rest of the film has its inspired interludes, especially in the way Kriti Sanon does her Seeta Aur Geeta with a conviction that unintentionally pays a homage to all the celebrated twin-sister parts from Chaalbaaz to Do Dishayen and specially Sharmilee.
However the identity-switch segment in Do Patti is a bit of a barge. You can’t do a serious film on domestic violence—which Do Patti undoubtedly is—and then decide to have some fun with the twin-sis genre. It is a self-defeating redflag in a plot that is all green.
Deftly scripted (Ms Dhillon, take a bow) and brimming with a grim vivacity, Do Patti doesn’t shy away from showing what it sets out to. There is a lengthy sequence of brutal spousal aggression where Sanon’s Soumya gets thrashed by her husband who clearly has anger-management issues.
Saheer Sheikh in a tough role, takes his rough character smoothly from borderline toxic to a full-on privileged monster. As the spousal steamroller he is not as chilling as Naveen Andrews in Provoked. But Sheikh gets the character’s moods right.
I wish I could say the same for the ever-dependable Kajol. As the cop on duty determined to get the wife beater , her Haryanvi accent slips off faster than Kriti Sanon’s leggy candour. But that is the least of the problems. Kajol looks partially lost partially bored in a role that cried for Mita Vashisht.
As for Ms Sanon, she keeps the twin roles apart with rather amusing props, like the sassy twin smoking, the sober twin giving us that timid-rabbit look which is a dead giveaway. With some more subtlety and less twin-sis tricks, Do Patti could have gone much further. Not that its statement on domestic abuse ever gets shortchanged. Every wallop is accounted for.
