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Darlings movie review: Alia Bhatt brings out her quirky best in this dark comedy with questionable story

Darlings movie review: alia bhatt gives one of her best performances in darlings, a story about a woman's revenge on her violent husband..

The husband is an alcoholic who holds no remorse for assaulting his wife every night, the wife is head over heels in love with the man and doesn't mind cooking breakfast — the staple bun omelette — every morning for him with bruises all over — this may be a regular occurrence in many Indian households, but rarely gets talked about the way it should. Picking a subject like domestic violence for a dark comedy isn't ideal, but Darlings, starring Alia Bhatt , Shefali Shah and Vijay Varma, manages to hit the nail on the head. Directed by debutante Jasmeet K Reen, it is a quirky (as ironical as it may sound) take on how abuse against women and men is normalised. Nothing justifies the actions of either, but it's interesting to see the story pan out in a way that it never really looks unsettling. (Also read: 'Gauri Khan doesn't like anything', says Alia Bhatt, shares her review of Darlings )

Badrunissa Shaikh aka Badru (Bhatt) is smitten by roadside romeo Hamza Shaikh (Vijay Varma), and marries him as soon as he secures himself a government job. Cut to three years later and life after marriage, we see Bhatt getting beaten up every night for a new reason every time. Sometimes it's a kankar in the food, sometimes just because she sat in a colony meeting without the husband's consent. And once because he thinks she's having an affair. The intensity of abuse gets disturbing and more intense with each day, until one day when Badru decides to stand up and take charge. From that point, Darlings shows how a middle-class mother-daughter duo (Shah and Bhatt), who is caught in their own circumstantial hang-ups, gradually discovers their inner strength to survive in a city like Mumbai, battling all odds.

With a runtime of two hours 14 minutes, the film is well-paced with interesting revelations being made one after the other. Reen's story that she has co-written Parveez Sheikh is gripping and does trigger emotions of angst, helplessness and empathy. More than the story, the dialogues by Vijay Maurya (along with Sheikh and Reen) are impressive and genuinely make the film fit into the dark comedy genre. Some one-liners and comic punches are so subtle that if you don't pay attention, you won't understand why the person sitting next to you is laughing so hard. Wait for the climax that is funny and sad in its own way.

But in parts, the story does bother you when domestic violence is used as a ploy to trigger laughs — a woman sticking by her husband despite being abused, a man showing no sign of regret or for his actions, silent spectators shown as caricatures. At a time when more progressive and empowering stories are being liked by audiences, Darlings make you sit back and think, 'Did we really need a film like this to make a point or give a message?' At times, the film appears to be dealing with the situation at a surface level and does not seem to want to delve deeper into figuring out the psyche of such men, who think domestic violence is normal and just blame it on alcohol.

Moreover, Darlings is loaded with stereotypical characters, too. A lady who owns a salon on the ground floor, is privy to the scenario, but would rather discuss it with her clients than take any action. There's a trusted uncle, butcher Kasim Bhai (Rajesh Sharma) who covers up for the family's dirty actions. There's also Hamza's cunning boss (Kiran Karmarkar) who makes his life hell and loves to poke his nose in other people's business.

That being said, performances in Darlings take the cake. Bhatt is in full form; her quirky lines, dialogue delivery, vulnerable expressions, emotional meltdowns help connect with her on a deeper level. In fact, in some portions, she reminded me of Gully Boy's Safeena. Playing her onscreen mother is Shah, who delivers a phenomenal performance, and is way more restrained as compared to her recent outings in Humans and Jalsa. Shah is endearing, strong and lends the apt support to Bhatt's story.

Varma is impressive as Hamza and does succeed in making you hate him. He's cruel and unreasonable and his character, I felt, is written in the most realistic manner. Roshan Mathew as Zulfi is another character to watch out for. He might have in-your-face scenes, but whatever little he gets to perform, he doesn't go unnoticed. I wish there were more scenes with him, and his bond with Shah and Bhatt was fleshed out in a better way.

The camaraderie between Bhatt and Shah is perhaps on the strongest USPs of Darlings. It is rather a clever move on the part of filmmakers to have this mother-daughter story at the heart of the film, and not just focus on the domestic violence angle between the couple. But when tables turn and Hamza is the supposed victim at the hands of his merciless wife and her mother, violence against men somehow appears to look like a joke. Of course, Badru's actions are justified for she's full of vengeance and hatred, but somewhere it does make you question the very premise of Darlings. I won't be surprised if many diss Bhatt for agreeing to play a role that's seemingly misandrist, but then, we have to take everything with a pinch of salt.

Watch Darlings for some hard-hitting realities of our society, ace performances, dark humour.

Darlings Director: Jasmeet K. Reen Cast: Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Mathew

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Darlings review: Alia Bhatt raises the bar for movies with meaning

Darlings movie review: alia bhatt, vijay varma, shefali shah and roshan mathew deliver excellent performances in a film that is aware of what it is. a few forced comic touches spoil the effect though..

There are a few things that ‘ Darlings ’, a film which brings domestic violence to the fore, gets absolutely right, the most striking of them being the way it has created its couple — a husband who keeps beating his wife; and the wife who keeps believing, in a curdled mix of hope and desperation, that ‘ek din woh badal jaayenge’ (one day he will change).

A serial wife-beater doesn’t do it because he is forced into it; he does it because he likes it. It makes him feel like a big man in his own house, after being unmanned everywhere else, especially in his workplace, where he is treated like dirt. And a woman who keeps ignoring the battering, hiding all evidence under a smiling facade, does it from a place of almost unreal resilience that most fellow-sufferers recognise.

On that score, Alia Bhatt and Vijay Varma are spot on, as the beautifully-written Badrunissa and Hamza Sheikh, whose ‘love marriage’ a few years down the line becomes a cyclical series of beatings followed by apologies. And this is the other crucial element that feels just right: when Hamza, in the light of the day, looks at Badru dutifully making his pao-omlette breakfast, he is overcome. He tries making up to her, she resists, he lays on the charm that made her fall for him in the first place, she melts. The pattern is hard to break.

It is a toxic world, but it is theirs, and till the time we stay with the back-and-forth between them, the film holds us. Bhatt’s quicksilver change of moods reveals her emotional temperature underneath: very few actors working in Bollywood today have her ability to register moods without saying a word. And Varma is terrific: as a ticket collector at the bottom of the pole in his office, slaving under a jovial bully (Karmakar), he hasn’t really got what he wanted, so he will make sure that no one else can get what they want. It’s all command-and-control, and he never puts a foot wrong.

Watch the Darlings trailer here: 

The other powerful act is from Shefali Shah .  As Shamshunissa aka Shamshu, mother to Badru, she extends full support to her daughter, but she is not just a door-stopper. We see a woman using whatever she has to keep her head above the water, the hard grind she has had to go through to raise her daughter single-handedly only mentioned in passing. She is trying to make something of herself, and the portions between her and her earnest, handsome accomplice (Rohan Mathew) as she starts laying out her wares as a home-cook, lend a touch of amusement to the proceedings. He is very good too, and you want to see more of them, an odd pair that makes you smile.

It’s fine till there. It’s fine till there. The fact that the main characters are Muslim, living in a chawl with other Muslim characters, is not used to as a signpost ; they just happen to be Muslim, and while they are aware of the othering that goes on around them, they are quite capable of dealing with it matter-of-factly, conversationally, and clearly.

Post-interval, in a bid to lighten the ‘heavy’ topic of domestic abuse, the film starts to build on its black comedy aspect. Between the cooking of ‘mirchi ka salans’ and spicy biryanis, mother and daughter dream up clunky ways of revenge. A heavy-handed cop trying to be helpful (Maurya) shows up. Injecting humour into darkness is an easy temptation: how do you keep viewers entertained? The result is tonal confusion. The gags don’t really land, the comic touches feel forced, and a contrived sequence or two becomes annoying in a film which is otherwise so aware of its characters and their motivations.

But the climactic sequence, which has satisfying heft, rescues ‘Darlings’ from getting derailed. With her maiden production, dotted with a clutch of excellent performances, Alia Bhatt has raised the bar for movies with meaning, something a lost-in-the-woods Bollywood can do with.

Darlings movie cast: Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Mathew, Rajesh Gupta, Vijay Maurya, Kiran Karmakar Darlings movie director: Jasmeet K Reen Darlings movie rating: 2.5 stars

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Jasmeet K Reen

Badrunissa "Badru"

Shefali Shetty

Shamshunissa "Shamshu"

Vijay Varma

Hamza Sheikh

Rajesh Sharma

Kasim Kasai

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Darlings Movie Review: Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma Shine Bright in Netflix's Dark Comedy

Curated By : Bohni Bandyopadhyay

Last Updated: August 05, 2022, 17:58 IST

delhi, India

• 5 August 2022 | Hindi
• 2 hrs 13 mins | Black Comedy, Drama, Thriller
• Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vijay Varma, Shefali Shah
• Director: Jasmeet K Reen
• Music: Score: Prashant Pillai, Songs: Vishal Bhardwaj, Mellow D

Darlings Movie Review: Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah and Vijay Varma's black comedy brings out laughs in tragic situations, but is ultimately a story about shattered hopes and dreams

Alia Bhatt chose a sensitive topic like domestic violence as the debut project for her production house. Instead of making a hard-hitting film on it, the story has been wrapped in the garb of a black comedy. But it is the characters’ hopes, dreams and despair that will remain with you till the end, after the credits roll.

Badrunissa (Alia Bhatt) falls in love and marries Hamza (Vijay Varma) who turns out to be an alcoholic who beats his wife. Her mother Shamshunnisa (Shefali Shah) stays in the same chawl in Byculla and encourages her daughter daily to get rid of her abusive husband. But Alia, like many women, has still not lost hope. She wants to have a baby with her husband, fulfill the dreams she had seen with this man and keeps looking for ways to reform him.

The film might be triggering for a lot of us independent women who wouldn’t put up with abusive behavior even for a day. Darlings will anger you, infuriate you, especially after we have had films like Thappad. But you will have to set aside your ideas of right and wrong and try to understand Badru’s desperation to keep her relationship alive, and wait patiently for the limit of her patience.

The question of right and wrong arises many a times in the film, especially in the climax when Badru has to make a decision that will change her life forever. Throughout the film, there is a tussle playing out between the mother who is in favour of more drastic steps, while the daughter follows her heart, until her last hope is also snuffed out, changing the very core of her beliefs.

Alia Bhatt plays her part brilliantly as the gullible wife who believes she can change her husband. She shoulders the film as an actor as well, as is expected from someone who has delivered Udta Punjab, Gully Boy and Gangubai Kathiawadi. There are times when Badru reminds you of Safeena from Gully Boy.

Darlings reminded me of Gangubai Kathiawadi in moments of Badru’s vulnerability – victim of her circumstances but trying to make the most of it. When she is breaking plates after another episode of abuse and Zulfi (Roshan Matthew) comes in to check on her, it reminded me of Afsaan’s affection for Gangu. But there is a twist in the story here as well.

Vijay Varma seems to have become a master of grey-shaded characters, shedding crocodile tears to get his way, switching from loving husband to a violent demon in the blink of an eye.

Shefali plays a practical mother who is trying to show her daughter the reality of her marriage. She pulls off the quirky role with ease, and is the main source of comic relief in many scenes. Alia and Shefali are totally entertaining as mother and daughter on screen.

Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah and Vijay Varma’s performances are the brightest parts in this otherwise grim reality that the film represents.

Despite being a black comedy, the film has no elaborate or hilarious comic scene, and mostly remains an emotional affair. The production design and attention to detail is commendable, as is the pace of editing. Director Jasmeet K Reen has done a good job of telling the story without going into too many complications, while also maintaining a sense of dread all through the narrative. Some of the well-directed scenes are the build-ups to episodes of violence between Hamza and Badru. Darlings has good situational songs like La Ilaaj, Bhasad, and Pleaj, which capture the mood quite well.

Darlings might not be the best black comedy out there, but it definitely is worth a watch, especially if you are looking for stories about strong women taking charge of their own lives.

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• Darlings Movie Review In Hindi Starring Alia Bhatt Shefali Shah Vijay Varma

मूवी रिव्यू

मूवी रिव्‍यू: डार्लिंग्‍स

क्रिटिक रेटिंग, पाठकों की रेटिंग, अपनी रेटिंग दें.

रेकमेंडेड खबरें

अगला रिव्यू

Darlings Movie Review: Alia Bhatt lights up this dark comedy

Rating: ( 3.5 / 5).

Darlings has a cast to kill for. Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma and Roshan Mathew headline this seductive black comedy set in Mumbai. But that’s just the start. Equally fascinating, at least to me, are the supporting players who populate the world of this film. Vijay Maurya, Rajesh Sharma, Puja Swarup, Kiran Karmarkar and Ajit Kelkar turn up in minor parts and make them memorable. Even in unimportant scenes, your eye is never bored. Darlings is a reminder that, though Hindi cinema may be having a generally drab year, it’s not for a lack of human resource.

Cast: Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Vijay Maurya, Rajesh Sharma, Puja Swarup

Streaming on: Netflix

The film opens with a short, smart prologue. Badrunissa (Alia Bhatt) rushes to a movie date with her boyfriend, Hamza (Vijay Varma). She waits and waits, missing the show. He turns up late, bearing a teddy bear and apologizing. “Government job leke aya (I found a government job),” he tells her. “Let’s get married.” Badru brightens up, hugging him. The couple looks happy though we already know what’s coming. It’s also notable, I think, that the scene unfolds outside a famous multiplex in Mumbai. Having missed a film, Badru’s life proceeds to get decidedly un-filmy.

When we meet her next, Badru is three years into an abusive marriage. Hamza, a jerk and an alcoholic, routinely hits his wife, triggered by anything from slips in her cooking to a genuine concern for his well-being. He’s an inept ticket examiner by profession, projecting—it is suggested—his anger and frustration from work on his quietly suffering wife. Badru tries everything to get him to change: de-addiction pills, titillation, even a child. One day, pushed beyond all fathomable limits, she takes her husband hostage.

Going by the trailer of Darlings , you’d expect this twist to come much earlier on in the film. Crime comedies, after all, are all about the payoff. But director Jasmeet K Reen is loath to jump the gun. Teaming with co-writer Parveez Sheikh, she takes time delineating the patterns of abuse. The first hour is a gripping yet excruciating loop of Hamza’s violations of his wife. He’s a baiter and a master manipulator, frighteningly aware of his wife’s hopes and dreams and emotional weak points and using them to his advantage. Delicately, without ever really blaming her, the film shows how far Badru has internalized his behaviour. Shamsu (Shefali Shah), Badru’s acerbic, hard-bitten mother, repeatedly tells her to leave him. But she can’t. Class no doubt plays a part in it. “Things have changed for folks on Twitter,” Shamsu tells a cop at one point. “Not for us.”

Alia is brilliant as Badrunissa. As in Gully Boy (2019) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022), her Bombaiyaa accent is spot-on (with an eccentric ‘S’ added to the ends of English words). While her characters in the aforementioned films were defined by their assertiveness, Badru is a bit of a muddle. Even after she has restrained, drugged up and tortured Hamza, she remains weirdly open to his machinations and appeals (or gives a good impression of it). Shefali is entertaining as Shamsu—“Badappan gaya kan khujane,” she shoots—though the winner, clearly, is Vijay Varma. There are more layers to his Hamza than all one-note abusive husbands from Hindi films combined. He’s a creature of pauses and tics. His menace comes in bursts. Nana Patekar would be proud.

Cinematographer Anil Mehta works masterfully within limited spaces and settings. Notice how, in the early stages of the film, he retains his angles inside Hamza and Badru’s home, and changes them up only after the dynamics of this cramped household have shifted. The intricacies of Chawl life are emphasised; you get a sense of a hundred small hustles running parallelly. The songs, too, are a banger, especially the wild and swooning ‘Pleaj!’ by Mika Singh.

The second half loses some of its edgy focus. Having pushed its characters to a corner, the film struggles to bail them out. Jasmeet appears to be searching for a clean finish, despite the obvious messiness of what’s unfolding onscreen. Certain indulgences—like portraying the cop characters in strictly comic terms—could’ve been avoided. On the whole, though, Darlings entices and thrills, even if I wish the film had gone all out. I wish it had killed its darlings.

Darlings (I) (2022)

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Darlings Movie Review: आल‍िया भट्ट की इस डार्क-कॉमेडी परफॉर्मेंस नाम का हीरा अंधेरे में भी चमकता है...

Darlings Movie Review in hindi: आल‍िया भट्ट (Alia Bhatt) शेफाली शाह (Shefali Shah) और व‍िजय वर्मा (Vijay Varma) स्‍टारर ...अधिक पढ़ें

• Last Updated : August 6, 2022, 24:50 IST
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आल‍िया भट्ट (Alia Bhatt) इस साल ‘गंगुबाई’ (Gangubaai) में अपनी शानदार परफॉर्मेंस के जरिए खूब तारीफें पा चुकी हैं. अभी तक स‍िर्फ एक्‍ट्रेस के तौर पर नजर आ रहीं आल‍िया पहली बार अपनी फिल्‍म ‘डार्लिंग्‍स’ (Darlings) के जरिए प्रोड्यूसर भी बनी हैं. शायद यही वजह है कि आल‍िया और उनके फैंस, दोनों को ही उनके प्रोडक्‍शन हाउस इटरनल सनशाइन के बैनर तले बनीं इस फ‍िल्‍म से काफी ज्‍यादा उम्‍मीदें हैं. आल‍िया, शेफाली शाह (Shefali Shah) और व‍िजय वर्मा (Vijay Varma) स्‍टारर ये फिल्‍म आज नेटफ्ल‍िक्‍स (Netflix) पर र‍िलीज हो चुकी है. आल‍िया भट्ट ने अपने प्रोडक्‍शन हाउस की इस पहली फ‍िल्‍म के तौर पर घरेलू ह‍िंसा जैसे व‍िषय को चुना है, लेकिन इस सारे माहौल में भी इसका ट्रीटमेंट अब तक की क‍िसी भी कहानी से अलग कहा जा सकता है. जान‍िए कैसी है ये फ‍िल्‍म.

ये कहानी है बद्रून‍िसा (आल‍िया भट्ट) की है, ज‍िसे प्‍यार होता है हमजा (व‍िजय वर्मा) से और फ‍िर उनकी शादी हो जाती है. इस प्‍यार भरी कहानी में ट्व‍िस्‍ट तब आता है जब शराब पीते ही हमजा का दूसरा रूप सामने आता है और वह अपनी पत्‍नी को जानवरों की तरह मारता है. बद्रून‍िसा, मुंबई की एक चाल में रहती है और इसी चाल में उसकी मां (शेफाली शाह) भी रहती है, जो हर द‍िन अपनी बेटी को इस शादी से बाहर न‍िकलने की सलाह देती है. लेकिन कई औरतों की तरह ‘एक द‍िन सब ठीक हो जाएगा’ की उम्‍मीद में बद्रून‍िसा ये मारपीट सहती रहती है. लेकिन फ‍िर कुछ ऐसा होता है कि उसके सब्र का बांध टूट जात है और कहानी में आता है ट्व‍िस्‍ट. अब ये ट्व‍िस्‍ट क‍ितना मजेदार है, ये देखने के लिए आप नेटफ्ल‍िक्‍स पर ये फिल्‍म देख सकते हैं.

सबसे पहले कहानी की बात करें तो ये कहानी घरेलू ह‍िंसा जैसे बेहद संवेदनशील मुद्दे पर है, लेकिन ये कहानी दरअसल उस सच को द‍िखाती है जो अब तक की कई कहान‍ियों में म‍िस‍िंग रहा है. अक्‍सर घरेलू ह‍िंसा द‍िखाने वाली फिल्‍में एक ऐसे आदमी की कहानी द‍िखाती हैं, जो हर रात या द‍िन में भी अपनी पत्‍नी को मारता है, उसे जलील करता है और पत्‍नी समाज के डर से बस सालों तक ये सब सहती है. अक्‍सर ऐसी कहान‍ियों के बाद औरत के पैर की बेड़ी समाज, लोक-लाज होती है. लेकिन ‘डार्लिंग्‍स’ वो सच बयां करती है, जो असल में सच के बेहद करीब है. बद्रून‍िसा के साथ उसकी मां है, जो हर द‍िन उसे इस र‍िश्‍ते से न‍िकलने की बात करती है. पुल‍िस है, जो उसे एहसास द‍िलाती है कि वो मार रहा है क्‍योंकि वह मार खा रही है. दरअसल ऐसे र‍िश्‍तों में अक्‍सर मह‍िलाएं उस द‍िन का इंतजार करती हैं, ‘जब सबकुछ ठीक हो जाता है.’ और अक्‍सर रात में मारने वाला आदमी नशा उतरते ही प्‍यार भी बरसाता है, लाड़ भी द‍िखाता है. बस, रात के जख्‍मों को अक्‍सर द‍िन में ऐसे ही भर द‍िया जाता है और औरत फ‍िर रात में नए जख्‍मों को उस द‍िन की उम्‍मीद में सालों तक सहती है, ‘जब सब ठीक हो जाएगा…’ ‘डार्लिंग्‍स’ इस मायने में काफी खास है.

न‍िर्देशक जसमीत के. रीन ने इस भाव को बखूबी पर्दे पर उतारा है. हालांकि इस डार्क कॉमेडी में जहां परफॉर्मेंस चमक रहे हैं, वहीं कॉमेडी उतनी पकड़ नहीं बना पाती. दरअसल कहानी के भारीभरकम सीन्‍स में भी अगर कुछ नयापन लेकर आती हैं, तो वह हैं शेफाली शाह. आल‍िया और शेफाली स्‍क्रीन पर साथ में शानदार केम‍िस्‍ट्री लेकर आती हैं. वहीं व‍िजय वर्मा ने ज‍िस तरह के पति की भूम‍िका न‍िभाई है, वह काब‍िले तारीफ है. उनका ग्रे-शेड स्‍क्रीन पर साफ देखा जा सकता है.

2 घंटे 14 म‍िनट की इस फिल्‍म में शुरुआत में सीक्वेंस बहुत ज्‍यादा नहीं बदलते हैं, लेकिन आख‍िरी ह‍िस्‍से में कुछ मजेदार ट्व‍िस्‍ट हैं. हालांकि ये एक मास्‍टरपीस नहीं कही जा सकती, लेकिन डार्लिंग्‍स एक मजेदार कहानी को सही सलीके से कहती हुई फिल्‍म है. मेरी तरफ से इस फ‍िल्‍म को 3.5 स्‍टार.

डिटेल्ड रेटिंग

Tags: Alia Bhatt , Film review

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Darlings Movie Review (2022)

Alia bhatt scores another big win as a survivor of domestic abuse in jasmeet k reen’s ‘darlings’, which also has a terrific shefali shah and vijay varma, and is now on netflix..

Darlings Movie Cast & Crew

The plural title of Darlings is no accident. The protagonist Badru (played by Alia Bhatt) is from a lower-middle-class Muslim family, and her English consists of odd plural phrases like "I loves you" and "bad lucks". I felt she sounded like the Rani Mukerji character in Saawariya . (Later, I discovered that director Jasmeet K Reen's first film was to have been produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.) But apart from this aspect of speech, there isn't much that is singular about Badru – at least at first. She is a victim of domestic abuse. As her mother (Shefali Shah) says, the world may have changed for "Twitter people" but not for them. Badru listens to a line like this from her husband and melts: "If I don't love you why would I hit you? And why would you bear it if you did not love me?" Someones should bring her to her senses. And that someones is…

Before moving on, let's talks about Alia Bhatt's performance. Give her a well-written role and she seems to absorb it into her very DNA and become that person. It's a gifts. The way her smile flickers outside a movie theatre when her husband was still her boyfriend and she's looking right into his face. The way she hyper-talks to her husband well-knowing that he could explode at any time, as though her prattle is going to buy her extra time before the physical abuse begins. Her phrasing of lines like " Mummy aap khana accha banati ho kahaani nahin " – without a pause, and with just the right amount of impatience. The way she slowly backs away from the door after disobeying her husband, because her instincts tell her that this time it is going to be bad, really bad. There isn't one false notes.

Vijay Varma plays the husband, Hamza. He seems to be the kind of man who's stuck in a shitty job. (And quite literally, as shown in one scene.) And because he cannot vent out against his boss, he drinks a lot and all his pent-up rage lands on his wife. He is not just a misogynist but also a misanthrope. He hates people and if he can do something to piss them off, he will – like how he resists signing off on a deal to redevelop the chawl he lives in. With his wiry body and his Anyman face, Vijay Varma takes this hateful character and keeps him hateful, without any backstory or redeeming characteristics. (Of course, this is also a function of the writings, by the director and Parveez Sheikh.) He plays a human scorpion, and he is excellents.

As is Shefali Shah, who completes the trio that should win all sorts of awards next year. Darlings is a domestic noir-cum-black comedy, and if the Badru-Hamza couple takes care of the domestic noir, Shefali Shah's character keeps you in splits with her deadpan expressions that leave us with little doubt about how much she hates her son-in-law. She makes a great pair with Alia Bhatt, and her emotional manipulation of a second-hand dealer played by a very sweet Roshan Mathew is howlarious. And this angle has a terrific payoff, something that made me smile and tear up at the same time. But the Shefali character also has a dark past, and when those colours seep into the performance, her character becomes almost four-dimensional. One of the major jobs of a director is to establish and maintains the pitch and tone of the performances – however skilled the actors are – and Jasmeet K Reen kills with this cast, which includes Rajesh Sharma and Vijay Maurya.

The film is so much… fun that it's often easy to forget that it is about abuse. And that's the trickiest success of Darlings : even when Badru is babbling in front of a police officer and making you laugh, you never lose sight of the blood-congealed scar below her eye. The cop says men behave this way because their women allow them to, " kyonki aurat banne dete hain ". And this sentiment is echoed in Gulzar and Vishal Bhadwaj's song, Dil hamara la-ilaaj hai : My heart cannot be cured. A stanza goes: Dil ko zeher mil jaaye to pyaas hai har waqt ki / Angaaron pe chalna bhi to aadat hai kambakht ki. "The heart is so used to poison that it is thirsty for it. Even walking on coals has become a habit." These words recognise the scars on Badru's heart and soul, but Arijit Singh's soothing voice is like a balm, like a promise that a cure, an ilaaj , will be available soon. Like the song, the film doesn't drown us in desperation. It keeps Badru and her la-ilaaj dil afloat.

And when things get out of hand, it's time for payback. Gradually, Badru realises that none of the items on her to-do list – like having a baby – are going to materialise soon. And with her mother, she makes life hell for Hamza. There's a visual joke here: their tools of revenge are all "womanly things", like a belan , a saucepan, a dupatta , and high heels. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Badru's display of fury in the scene involving high heels is breathtaking to behold. There are some plot points I wish had been spaced out better – say, Hamza's boss suspecting something. It seems to happen too soon. And the portion involving railway tracks plays out a little too easily. But I totally bought the climax, which retains both Badru's goodness and Hamza's evilness. I think people do change, or at least that they can change – but for the purposes of this story this ending is just perfects. 

About Author

Baradwaj Rangan

National Award-winning film critic Baradwaj Rangan, former deputy editor of The Hindu and senior editor of Film Companion, has carved a niche for himself over the years as a powerful voice in cinema, especially the Tamil film industry, with his reviews of films. While he was pursuing his chemical engineering degree, he was fascinated with the writing and analysis of world cinema by American critics. Baradwaj completed his Master’s degree in Advertising and Public Relations through scholarship. His first review was for the Hindi film Dum, published on January 30, 2003, in the Madras Plus supplement of The Economic Times. He then started critiquing Tamil films in 2014 and did a review on the film Subramaniapuram, while also debuting as a writer in the unreleased rom-com Kadhal 2 Kalyanam. Furthermore, Baradwaj has authored two books - Conversations with Mani Ratnam, 2012, and A Journey Through Indian Cinema, 2014. In 2017, he joined Film Companion South and continued to show his prowess in critiquing for the next five years garnering a wide viewership and a fan following of his own before announcing to be a part of Galatta Media in March 2022.

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‘Darlings’ movie review: A quirky take on domestic violence that is less than the sum of its parts

Alia bhatt is as quicksilver as ever, shefali shah is equally mercurial and vijay verma shines in a challenging role, but the inherent elegance of the three actors, sometimes, sanitises the everyday characters they play.

August 05, 2022 02:43 pm | Updated 07:14 pm IST

A still from ‘Darlings’

Dismantling the crutches that help patriarchy saunter into living rooms, Darlings is a quirky social thriller that eventually almost reduces to a well-made public service film on domestic violence. The good thing is director Jasmeet K Reen inadvertently acknowledges the progression before the end credits roll.

Made with an activist’s gaze, the film wants women to punch past the abuse rather than negotiate with the scorpion, a euphemism used for the abusive husband in the film.

Darlings says that when it comes to domestic violence, there are no gray areas. It doesn’t allow an abusive husband to fall into the safety net of social conditioning and eating and drinking habits. The creature is born with a sense of entitlement and expresses it when he imagines provocation from the so-called weaker sex.

Set in Mumbai’s Byculla area, the narrative pulls us into the world of Badru (Alia Bhatt) and Hamza (Vijay Verma). Romance has led to marriage and after three years, they appear a lovey-dovey couple but Hamza seems to feel violence is also part of the everyday co-existence of a man and a woman living under a roof. He hits her, she sheds a tear, he says sorry and she believes it has more to do with the liquor in the belly than the vacuum in his head. It is a toxic pattern that we all see around us but ignore, very much like the beautician who lives a floor beneath the couple.

A ticket collector in the Indian Railways, interestingly, Hamza doesn’t lose his cool when his boss bullies him into doing things that are well below his dignity. Perhaps, he drags his unfulfilled being home and turns into a beast.

Eventually, Badru and her feisty single mother Shamsu (Shefali Shah) decide to turn the tables on Hamza by adopting an eye for an eye approach. A cook, Shamsu has her own recipe of survival and unlike her daughter, Shamsu’s ingredients are, at times, a little too spicy for comfort. She has more than one admirer and she uses them to her own advantage, particularly Zulfi (Roshan Mathew), a writer who makes ends meet by selling stolen goods.

After drawing us into the realistic narrative, the writers, keen to live up to the offbeat label, try a few tricks to keep the audience entertained. But the funny twists don’t consistently work in a film that assumes an edifying tone in the second half. Curiously, words like talaq and khula are not even considered by writers who seem anxious to have blood on their pens. It seems the central twist was written first, and then the rest of the screenplay was dressed up.

From the heartfelt performances of the actors, to Vishal Bhardwaj’s music and Gulzar’s lyrics, there is much to appreciate, but the end result is still a tad underwhelming. With trailers telling a lot more than required, these days, even thrillers have become predictable. It feels like a short film that is stretched because of its big message and competent performers.

Alia is as quicksilver as ever, Shefali is equally mercurial and Vijay Verma shines in a challenging role. But despite the correct diction and delivery of dialogues, the three actors, after a point, seem too perfect to belong to the world that they inhabit on-screen. Their inherent elegance, sometimes, sanitises the everyday characters they play. Perhaps the director’s vision causes dissonance. Despite dealing with an emotionally messy issue, the execution feels a little too clinical and stage-managed. 

Not bad, but Anubhav Sinha’s  Thappad , made on a similar theme, was a more satisfying experience.

Darlings is currently streaming on Netflix

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Hindi cinema / reviews / Indian cinema

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Darlings Review: Alia Bhatt Netflix Movie Doesn’t Understand What ‘Dark Comedy’ Is

More a comedy of errors than the black comedy revenge thriller it desires to be..

Photo Credit: Netflix

Alia Bhatt and Shefali Shah in Darlings

• Darlings is released August 5 at 12:30pm IST on Netflix in India
• Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Mathew lead Darlings cast
• Darlings produced by SRK’s Red Chillies, Bhatt’s Eternal Sunshine

Darlings — the new Alia Bhatt movie, out Friday on Netflix — purports to be a black comedy revenge thriller. In it, a young woman (Bhatt) stuck in an abusive marriage seeks vengeance for the years of violence afflicted on her by her alcoholic husband (Vijay Varma). When it comes to time spent though, the movie is weirdly split evenly between the torture Bhatt's character goes through, and the plans she concocts after she's pushed past her breaking point. But not only does it make you wait too long for the kicker — it takes half of the movie's 134-minute runtime — Darlings doesn't really know how to raise the stakes and which direction to head in even after that pivotal moment. It ambles on as previously, with the narrative momentum never really picking up.

On one level, that's because Darlings — directed by feature debutante Jasmeet K. Reen, off a screenplay she co-wrote with Parveez Sheikh (Queen, BellBottom ) — is more a comedy of errors than a dark comedy honestly. At times, it's more like a Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie, say Gol Maal , than a proper black comedy revenge thriller in its vein, à la Promising Young Woman . Leading up to release, the cast and crew of Darlings attempted to “educate” audiences on what the phrase dark comedy means. But as the Netflix film shows, they themselves do not understand it either. This results in a tonal imbalance, with Darlings unnecessarily shifting between various genres. If you're making a dark comedy as you purport, everything needs to follow in that direction from minute 1.

Darlings' inability to pick a lane proves that Bollywood is ultimately too afraid to actually get dark. But at times, it's not even about big changes — but rather, the order of mixing the ingredients. Take for instance, a character who hides their trauma behind dialogues that come across as jokey. Except we only learn this towards the end when the Netflix movie reveals said character's past. Darlings would have been better off if it gave us this reveal early on. Because then, this character's words all movie would be taken as comedic by other characters, but they would take a much darker meaning for the audience. By doing the opposite, the lines are comedic for us too. It's failures like these that ultimately keep Darlings from being what it desires to be.

Everything You Need to Know About Darlings

Three years out of the honeymoon phase and settled in a chawl in Southeast Mumbai's Byculla neighbourhood, Badrunissa “Badru” Shaikh, née Ansari ( Bhatt ) is regularly beat upon by her abusive husband, Hamza Shaikh ( Varma ). To the point that those who live around them have gotten used to the sounds emanating from their household each night. Badru believes Hamza's alcohol consumption — his day begins with a shot — is part of the problem. And it's implied that his government job, where he works as a ticket collector for the Railways, but is also made to clean his boss's toilet, contributes to his frustrations, which he then takes out on his wife. Make no mistake though: Hamza is the villain on Darlings, as he manipulates Badru's emotions and spins facts to suit himself.

While her mother Shamshunissa “Shamshu” Ansari ( Shefali Shah ) has been telling Badru she needs to get away from Hamza from day one, Badru believes she can fix him. Darlings never really clarifies if it's because she loves him in a weird sort of way, or whether if it's because she's devoted to her big-picture plan. Badru has years of her life planned out: first kid in 2020, a big house in 2021, a second baby in 2022, and a car in 2024. It's why she keeps pushing Hamza to sign on the dotted line for a builder's proposed redevelopment plan (that would no doubt gentrify the place and push them out, though the Netflix movie never really addresses that). That only serves to anger Hamza more though, and Badru realises she must come up with a plan to fix him for good.

But no matter what she tries, Hamza shows no inclination to do better except for empty promises. And when his anger goes too far one night, Badru accepts that it's impossible to change her husband. Well, for 10 minutes anyway. Darlings has that peculiar problem where its protagonist keeps swinging back and forth between Hamza-has-gone-too-far and I-still-care-for-Hamza. While Badru feels too passive for the first hour, she's too aimless for the second one, even as the character supposedly comes into her own. But the character's transformation — from a naive and innocent young woman to powerful, motivated, and in control — is repeatedly undermined by the Netflix movie's desire to craft comedic bits, many of which feature a police officer (Vijay Maurya).

Darlings, Morbius , The Sandman, and More on Netflix in August

Mild plot spoilers follow.

And it's how Darlings turns into a comedy of errors. Early into the second act, as Badru contemplates how to fix her husband, her mother says that she should just kill him. When Shamshu gets a call from the police a minute later, the mother-daughter duo goes into a panic, thinking the police somehow overheard them. 🤦‍♀️ The scene that follows belongs more in Hera Pheri . Later, after Badru has decided to teach Hamza a lesson, Hamza's boss — the same guy who makes him clean toilets — begins inquiring about him. The scene that follows also belongs more in Hera Pheri. Even later, as Badru wonders what to do with Hamza (who's sitting tied to a chair in their flat), the mother and daughter decide to file a missing person's complaint. Why bring that kind of spotlight onto yourself?

The only thing that saves them from being caught red-handed is a naive decision by Zulfi ( Roshan Mathew ), a young man who hovers around the Shaikhs and Ansaris, much like he hovers over the Netflix film. Mathew doesn't need to exist in this story, as his presence is more or less tertiary to Darlings. Zulfi is important to the plot and its machinations, but he doesn't have much to do.

Beyond the comedic misapplication, what dooms Darlings is its misunderstanding of narrative approach and character continuity. After Hamza falsely promises to rectify his ways, a following scene is framed in a lovey-dovey way, replete with a musical montage. It's understandable that Badru might be deluding herself, but why is the movie deluded too? Elsewhere, while the Netflix movie never explores the trauma some characters carry, with most others, it's left at the doorstep. They don't carry their trauma — as they rightly would — from scene to scene. This is crucial for the movie as it allows to do its fluffy comedic bits, but it creates a dissonance in the mind of the audience.

Like the execution of the movie's ideas, the ending too is muddled. On one hand, it indicates that Darlings is a moral universe. But in its search for an empowering ending — we get a full screen PSA, inside a movie — the Netflix movie essentially turns Badru into Alia Bhatt. At least Darlings ends at the cinemas. Something the film was once designed for — you can sense the “interval” that was timed to Badru's “transformation” — before it got moved to streaming. It's interesting that Netflix ended up being the destination, because Shah Rukh Khan-owned Red Chillies is a producer here.

Darlings to Laal Singh Chaddha , the 7 Biggest Movies in August

Alia Bhatt and Vijay Varma in Darlings Photo Credit: Netflix

In late 2017, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings personally flew down to court Shah Rukh Khan , getting his banner Red Chillies to produce films and series for its platform. I imagine that was in the hopes that such a deal might one day lead to a Netflix film with India's darling. That dream never materialised, with the deal dying a slow death as Red Chillies produced bottom of the barrel content for Netflix — remember the Emraan Hashmi-led Bard of Blood , the zombie horror miniseries Betaal , or the Bobby Deol-led crime thriller Class of ‘83 ? — over the years.

While Darlings might seem like a return to those days, it (most likely) isn't. Red Chillies hasn't produced an original for Netflix since 2020. And more importantly on Darlings, it's a co-producer alongside Eternal Sunshine, the new banner of first-time producer Bhatt. Darlings is the start of its Alia Bhatt business — and Netflix is no doubt praying that this collaboration turns out to be more fruitful than the last one.

Darlings is released Friday, August 5 at 12:30pm IST on Netflix worldwide.

• Release Date 5 August 2022
• Language Hindi
• Genre Comedy, Drama, Thriller
• Cast Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma, Roshan Mathew, Rajesh Sharma, Vijay Maurya, Kiran Karmarkar, Pooja Swaroop, Santosh Juvekar
• Director Jasmeet K. Reen
• Producer Gauri Khan, Alia Bhatt, Gaurav Verma

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In this Darlings film, Alia Bhatt , Shefali Shah played the primary leads.

The Darlings was released in theaters on 05 Aug 2022.

The Darlings was directed by Jasmeet K Reen

Movies like Emergency , Panchayat Season 3 , Heeramandi and others in a similar vein had the same genre but quite different stories.

The soundtracks and background music were composed by Vishal Bhardwaj, Prashant Pillai for the movie Darlings.

The cinematography for Darlings was shot by Anil Mehta .

The movie Darlings belonged to the Comedy,Drama, genre.

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