Subhash K Jha celebrates six years of Kartik Aaryan’s Luka Chuppi in this unique feature.
Long before Chhaava swept into the nation’s consciousness, director Laxman Utekar made the charming comedy Luka Chuppi, which took Kartik Aaryan’s stardom a notch ahead. Just when the small-town comedy threatened to sag under the weight of over-statement, there comes a fresh, feisty take on a live-in relationship in this Progressive Comedy (not to be confused with the Regressive Comedy as in Total Dhamaal). Luka Chuppi doesn’t mind bending the rules of the rom-com genre as long the tilt doesn’t make the script look cross-eyed and waylaid. A sense of madcap adventure is constantly projected into the narrative without losing grip over the grammar of growing giggles.
Luka Chuppi doesn’t try too hard to generate humour. It doesn’t always make us laugh. But it never fails to amuse, as Guddu and Rashmi, two Mathura-based TV journalists, fall in love and decide to give ‘live-in’ a chance before settling in permanently. Egged on by his best friend/sidekick Abbas (Aparshakti Khurrana bang-on with his deadpan expressions), the couple decides to give live-in a try. The adventures thereafter are not as smooth as, say, Badhaai Ho, where middle-class mores were projected with unflinching accuracy. Luka Chuppi sometimes goes awry in its search for satire but is not the least fearful of stumbling.
Guddu wants to do “everything” that live-in couples do. Rashmi isn’t biting the bait. But they do end up in bed, and soon she whispers the four magic words, “Do we have protection?”. Guddu is ready with an assortment of condoms.
In breaking the wall that separates love and sex in Hindi commercial cinema and in showing the lead couple with healthy hormonal instincts Luka Chuppi raises hopes for the Bollywood comedy where kissing is still seen as a big deal, and audiences are actually said to count the number of times lips lock on the screen.
Come to think of it, there are no kisses between Kartik Aryan and Kriti Sanon in this film. Yet they communicate a warm, easygoing alliance that comes not from singing songs together but from recognizing your life partner for who she is.
Most of the humour is generated organically and without making strenuous efforts to induce humour into social statement. Luka Chuppi is a comedy with an underlying layer of dark satire and a social statement on moral policing and communal biases in small towns. Director Laxman Utekar, who has done the lucid cinematography in Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish and Dear Zindagi, has a keen eye for smalltown quirks. He gets the mood right, especially in the frequent aerial shots of the small-town rooftops. But the stellar supporting cast is frequently let down by the persistent attempts to make them seem chronically hyper. Do these people have to say or do something all the time?
Most importantly, Luka Chuppi works for the lead pair. Kartik Aryan is endearingly guileless and eager to score, while Kriti Sanon is more worldly-wise and slightly annoying in her will to be the dominant partner. Together, the couple is a scream. Albeit a stifled one.
