Do Patti : My Spectacular Introduction to Bollywood

It doesn’t make sense that I haven’t watched a Bollywood movie until now. I like to explore different cultures and, probably more importantly, I’m tired of what Hollywood is putting out these days. And yet, even though it's been on my mind all this time, I still never quite got around to it… until Do Patti. Now, I regret having wasted so much time out of laziness and, I'll admit, some prejudice. My only salvation is the hope this article can convince you to save yourself from missing out too.

If you haven’t heard of the film yet, Do Patti. The film starts with the gentle and emotionally fragile Saumya accusing her husband Dhruv of attempted murder, at which point we go back in time to when detective Vinya hears the first reports of related potential issues. During her investigation, she learns more about Saumya’s wild twin sister Shailee (who may be ~involved~ with Dhruv, if you know what I mean), the sisters’ tragic backstory, and, well, a lot more. Let's just say the investigation gets out of hand pretty quickly.

I know it sounds like a trashy drama, but I promise it’s much better than you imagine - I just don’t want to spoil it.

Going into Do Patti, I only had one concrete expectation : a cheesy musical number. While that stereotype was proved true by the end of the film, a lot of other preconceived notions I had about Bollywood were absolutely destroyed. I don’t quite know how to articulate what I thought of Bollywood before - in my head, it’s an ambiguous fog of “conservative values” and “less-than-stellar quality” - but if you’re slightly wary of Bollywood like me, I’m almost certain Do Patti will prove you wrong.

The most exciting aspect of the film was how difficult it was to anticipate where the story was going. To be fair, that might just be because I’m not familiar with the story arcs and character archetypes common in Bollywood, but it was still an absolute joy to experience. Do Patti blended elements of family drama, romance, and mystery thriller, offering enough variety that its 2-hour runtime didn’t feel like a drag. If anything, it felt more like bingeing a good show that manages to weave individual arcs into a greater story.

The acting was also incredibly refreshing because it was representational rather than Hollywood’s preferred realism, which effectively means that the characters are played as the imagined ideal of their character type rather than as realistic people. For people used to more “method” styles of acting, it might feel cheap and unprofessional at first, but it’s quite charming to see the actors embody each character’s archetype once you understand it as a deliberate artistic choice. More importantly, the acting style makes the characters a point of familiarity and consistency (excepting, of course, certain plot twists) in the otherwise more convoluted story.

Those more technical details are only half of what made Do Patti such a delight to watch, though. As I mentioned before, one of the things that kept me from watching Bollywood films before was my fear that they would be too conservative for me. Imagine my surprise, then, when Do Patti did a better job than It Ends With Us could even dream of. The message was a little heavy-handed at times, sure, not to mention some questionable choices in the messaging, but altogether I was pleasantly surprised by how well they tackled an issue as difficult as domestic violence.

Also, a final bonus point for me was how Do Patti cast a 34-year-old woman as the romantic lead. Her age wasn’t emphasised, there were no “cougar” or “milf” implications - if anything, Kriti Sanon’s character is acting like a 19-year-old. Can you imagine? Hollywood could never.

I can’t promise that Do Patti is a good representation of other Bollywood movies, because like I said, this is the first one I’ve watched. I wouldn’t call it perfect either, because I know my review is this glowing in part because of how surprised I was at how much I enjoyed the film - most Indian reviewers actually rated it quite badly, and I can understand why (there were enough plotholes to bankrupt a city, and Vinya's actress seemed to be phoning it in a bit). Still, I think it’s a pretty solid entry point for anyone interested in trying a whole new language of cinema, if only because the plot line and style combine to create something familiar enough to be accessible yet unique enough to be interesting.

Not to mention that it’s probably better to save the quality classics for when you understand the form well enough to appreciate its perfection anyway.

So yeah, go watch Do Patti. Maybe you’ll waste 2 hours of your life, but maybe you’ll discover you should have been wasting hundreds of hours this whole time. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a decent bet to take.