Sisters are doin’ it for themselves, goes the feminist anthem. In Baipan Bhari Deva, sisters are doing it to each other. There is no shortage of siblings – six in all – and hence no shortage of bickering. The ties of blood have curdled for Jaya (Rohini Hattangady), Shashi (Vandana Gupte), Pallavi (Suchitra Bandekar), Sadhana (Sukanya Kulkarni Mone), Ketaki (Shilpa Navalkar) and Charu (Deepa Parab Chaudhari). Will they set aside their differences for a common event that promises the healing of old wounds?
The question is moot in Kedar Shinde’s feel-good drama. The title of the Marathi film loosely means Alas, The Burden of Womanhood. The move is light and uplifting fare, inspiring belly laughs alongside copious weeping.
There is welcome tartness too in Vaishali Naik’s sharply observed screenplay. Naik’s script, with inputs from Omkar Datt, is very good in capturing the joys of sorority as well as the petty, mean-spirited things that siblings say to each other simply because they can.
Matters ranging from the profound to the trivial have caused divisions between the sisters. The eldest, Jaya, is in a depressive funk. Charu has a husband who has shifted the burden of his problems onto her. Shashi is upset that her daughter prefers her mother-in-law to her. Pallavi is refusing to give her husband a divorce. Ketaki is boastful about her wealth. Sadhana has a tyrannical father-in-law who has crushed her dreams.
The fractious lot bring their emotional baggage to a competition for the Mangala Gaur ceremony, in which women pray for the well-being of their partners. The shadows of past grievances and present-day tensions hang over the glee of being in the same room after so many years apart.
She’s so young and so fit, Pallavi achingly says about her husband’s girlfriend. The build-up to the group-hug moment winds past menopause and child-bearing. As the pear-shaped women will their unfit bodies into dance moves, Baipan Bhari Deva finds harmony amidst acrimony while also acknowledging the unique problems faced by women in domestic situations.
The cast has a lived-in chemistry, there are numerous memorable situations, and the script is suffused with acuity and honesty despite the imperative to easily solve intractable problems. Kedar Shinde relies so heavily on the writing and performances that he scarcely bothers with the technical aspects.
The 137-minute film unfolds like a play or a television serial, with little attention paid to consistent tonality or even basic stagecraft. Jarring close-ups and random cuts interrupt the screenplay’s more trenchant observations.
Tragedy follows hilarity followed in turn by farce in a matter of minutes. Although the competition is time-bound, there is little sense of exactly how long it takes the women to rehearse alongside putting out individual fires.
Salvation is always around the corner in the form of a sharp scene or a stirring performance. If the pre-interval section sets up the characters and their mutual discord, the post-interval section demands a very large handkerchief or maybe even a whole tissue box. The tears flow easily, as does a denouement that, despite manipulative scripting and easy short-cuts, feels earned.