Arun Arun
Chhatriwali Movie Review, Chhatriwali is the story of a girl who doesn’t work at an umbrella factory (as the name suggests). The name is cleverly used for two purposes in the film – when Rakul (Sanya) lies and tells everyone she works at an umbrella factory because she is ashamed of telling people that she works as a quality supervisor at a condom factory. Secondly, condoms are also referred to as chhatri in most places. Hence, the usage. Anyway, coming back to the plot.
Chhatriwali Movie Review: Rakul Preet Singh’s film is informative but lags in bits
I could never wrap my head around Bollywood’s obsession with continuously addressing condom as a chhatri or an umbrella. Not only it’s cringe to hear repeatedly but also, it somewhere defeats the whole purpose with which films around these subjects are made. Moreover, picking a taboo subject and making a film on it can turn out to be quite risky if you don’t stick to the agenda and beat around the bush. Thankfully, Rakul Preet Singh’s Chhatriwali, directed by Tejas Prabhaa Vijay Deoskar, doesn’t digress much, and follows a crisp screenplay. There are some flaws here and there, but with all the humour and lighter moments, they can be somewhat overlooked.
It’s 2023, but Bollywood’s steadfastly holding on to that awkward feeling demonstrated by a newly married Rishi Kapoor in 1977’S Doosra Aadmi or Shekhar Suman in 1986’s Anubhav, when they stood before a medical store and struggled to buy condoms.
Director Tejas Prabhaa Vijay Deoskar’s Chhatriwali is set in Karnal, and revolves around Sanya Dhingra (Rakul Preet Singh) – a chemistry teacher, who is looking for a full time job to help her financially struggling family to sustain. As luck would have it, she soon gets an offer from Ratan Lamba (Satish Kaushik) to be the quality control head at his condom company, a role she hesitantly takes up because of the taboos and perception attached to the product.
Songs add on to the ‘masala’ aspect of the vision, but emerge as misfits, never endowing the plot with an in-depth meaning. It’s almost as if they’ve been placed in to check the boxes for all elements that makes a Bollywood film, more Bollywood. However, even though the movie has been packaged as a romantic-comedy, the main couple’s (characters played by Rakul Preet and Sumeet Vyas) relationship never drives us away from the more important discussions, and that way, it fits the bill as per actors’ claims that it tackles the conversation around sex education sensitively and with a vision closer to the ground reality.
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