Veere Di Wedding

Veere Di Wedding or so adult, you need purple swabs.
Disclaimer: This review is adult too, so keep the purple swabs ready.

I wish I could talk about Khoobsurat (dir: Shashanka Ghosh, 2014), Fawad Khan, ‘Maa Ka Phone Aaya’, ‘Jo Main Jaanti ki Preet Kare Dukh Hoi’. Or about Aisha (dir: Rajshree Ojha, 2010) and Sonam Kapoor’s brilliant Emma, so privileged, so pampered, that she knows f*** all. Or I could talk about the Pakistani show Shehr-e-Zaat (dir: Sarmad Khoosat, 2012), which talks of woman power in relation to an individual’s quest for spiritual salvation, but hey, we don’t talk about Pakistanis.

But instead, here we are talking of Veere Di Wedding (dir: Shashanka Ghosh, 2018). A story of Kalindi (Kareena Kapoor), ……, oh f***, I’ve already forgotten the names and have to go look them up. Yes, Avni (Sonam Kapoor), Sakshi (Swara Bhaskar) and Meera (Shikha Talsania), and their problems with … Men? Mothers? Fathers? Growing up? Sex? F***, I don’t know.

So yes, women swear. I grew up in Bhendi Bazar and heard my mother, her friends, my grandmother, our neighbors, use the m********, b******, c******, words regularly. And no, it didn’t change their lives. And there’s the Holi in the hills, where the women abuse the men in the choicest language, even throw stones at them, and no, it doesn’t change their lives.

And orgasm. Well, from the word ‘charam sukh’ it is obvious we discovered it just about the time Sita was being born as a test tube baby. We Indians are very forward that way.

And as for sex, I guess, since we are all here, our mothers must have done it. And the purpose of all that sex talk was defeated for me anyway, because Sakshi is pretty shame-faced about masturbating, ah, that purple swab. Not cheating technically, he he he, but, you know. And her friends are like, OMG, really? And she doesn’t think to tell her father, my husband is an a*******, he humiliates me, wants me to cook, Papa. But instead says, and then you know what, Papa, I was masturbating and he caught me at it. And Papa laughs. Oh really, you should have told me earlier. Oh yes, beta, I would have bought you a diamond-studded vibrator.

And by the way, do women really ‘jerk off’?

As for drinking. Being that person who is puking into the toilet bowl after her second drink, all I can say is more power to women with manly livers.

And of course, that item number after the item number, is adrenalin boosting, because who doesn’t want to be that alpha (fe)male, stringing along several white hunks of men. And driving off with that Bentley.

I have no problem if you solve your problems by going to Thailand. I’ve often wanted to do that, but don’t have sufficiently rich friends.

And I have no problem with all the product placement. Why not, if it brings in the money? And the Amul ice cream one is really funny.

I’ve no problem if the only person we see working is Avni. Even though the one case she fights, she berates the woman, saying she doesn’t deserve one rupee of alimony, because she is a drama queen and has not worked for a day in her life. Way to fight for woman power!

I have no problem that all the friends are good Punjabis, because hey, having a minority friend may make the story too complicated. And anyway, you did the mandatory overweight friend. Good for you!

And I have no problem that all your problems are rich kids problems. Because hey, I came to watch a rich kid chick-flick.

And so did, a house full of women like me. First day, afternoon show. Lots and lots of kitty party groups. Even though their problems were different than yours. For instance, the women behind me were hassled about 50 rupees that someone had paid extra. But they were all excited to see the movie, have some fun together, laugh. There were some laughs, certainly. But by the end, everyone was fizzled out.

So no, I have no problems with what you set out to do. My problem is how you did it. Putting together wedding, sex, fashionable clothes (now that needs another article, because seriously are we going to off-shoulder everything, Kareena?), a few laughs, drinking, Thailand, mandatory nouveau riche OTT Punjabi in-laws, does not make a story come together.

The film is cryptic shorthand where it needs to flesh out characters, scenes, why people are going through what they are going through, take the time to make me engage with each one of them.

Conflicts are resolved even before we realize that there has been a conflict. Hey, I want my mother’s bridal lehenga. Here it is, in a house full of junk and dirt, it is kept conveniently on a trunk with no trace of dirt on a table at my height, and lo and behold, I open the trunk and there is the lehenga, dry-cleaned and butter-papered, as my mother left it, just before dying, even though the audience thought for a long, long time, that she was not dead, but had left because of a philandering husband. Particularly since she was still talking and giving us a running commentary on her daughter’s doings.

All the conflicts are resolved with the same butter-papered, dry-cleaned ease. Jail, bail.

No scene is worked out from beginning to end. I am tired of the kind of shot-taking, which says b**** to match-cuts, transitions, movement within a scene. I am tired of bright, flat lighting. I am tired of sound designers being laid off work. Could we get some sound FX back? Some foley, some sound transitions, some sound textures, layers? Enough with the uniform background music track. Enough with the Punjabi songs that can’t be remembered or sung.

And no. A dead woman’s voice-over cannot create more drama than there actually is, or is not.

So no, this isn’t a Khoobsurat. Can we get Fawad Khan back please?

Hindi, Comedy, Drama, Color