What a good movie! Yes, the end totally fell apart, but it bravely confronted all kinds of big scary issues along the way. Read on if you won’t have the chance to see it, are not interested in a romance film, or are interested but need to be spoiled first so you can relax and enjoy it.
Whole Plot:
Our hero Naga Chaitanya is a young man from a lower caste who left the village and came to the city to try to start a Zumba dance/fitness studio. Our heroine Sai Pallavi is a young woman from a good family in the same village who is desperate to find a job and stay in the city but struggles with anxiety. She is staying with a friend who lives next door to Chai. They fight, make-up, and finally she reveals her amazing dance ability. He begs her to be his partner in the Zuma studio, and she agrees. They slowly fall in love as they work together and build their business, until they have a big fight because he stood her up one night when she invited him over. In the middle of the fight, she kisses him. And then they are in love. But there is a major issue, since they are from the same village and she is from the landlord’s family (although an unloved daughter of a younger son) and he is a low caste Christian. Then another intercaste couple they know dies (him murdered by her family, her suicide after his death) and it makes them see the risks. They decide to do whatever it takes to be together. They sell their business, and he moves to Dubai to do manual labor and establish himself while she goes home to the village. After 6 months, they plan that she will fake her suicide but really come to marry him and then they will live Dubai where no one can find them or hurt them again. Only then she doesn’t show up for the wedding. He goes back to the village to find her, and she finally confesses that her powerful uncle raped her when she was a little girl. He is a pedophile. That is why she has been so traumatized and anxious all the time. And she doesn’t dare leave the village and leave her little sister unprotected. Chai says they can’t live like this and supports her in going home to tell her parents the truth. Her father blames her, but her mother supports her and tells her to run away, she will protect the sister. Chai and Sai Pallavi go on the run and it seems hopeless, until Chai says they will go back and confront the uncle. He kills the uncle and is promptly arrested. And then in one freeze frame at the end we hear that the court declared him innocent and acting in self-defense.
So, that ending SUCKS. Let’s get that out of the way in the beginning. And I am 99% sure it was an ending forced by COVID. Filming was about 2/3rds completed back in 2019. And then the last 3rd just dragged out over abbreviated schedules with limited cast members and so on. The ending as it stands could work, if we got a 5 minute court room scene, establishing that their friends rallied to their support, they had a really good lawyer, the newspapers were behind them, and then we see Chai released after the innocent verdict and him and Sai Pallavi embracing and maybe a wedding over the end credits. Not that much more screen time, not even that expensive. But it would mean at least 200 people inside in a confined courtroom set without masks. And I am guessing that was just not possible.
Heck, there could even have been a more radical difference. Maybe the ending was supposed to be some big fight scene in which the underclass of the village stood up to the overclass once and for all and it wasn’t all on the couple. Instead of 4 people on a dimly lit roof set and a quick fight scene. I think I also read that their Dubai shoot was cut short, I could easily believe the movie was supposed to take them to Dubai, happily, and only then would she feel safe enough to tell him the truth and he would encourage her to file a police report against her uncle.
I’m not going to analyze the ending in detail or blame anyone for it, because I truly think it was out of their control. In general though, the ending was the perfect culmination of the message of the movie. We needed to see a woman and a lower class/caste man united and fighting together against entrenched powers, and ultimately succeeding. This is a movie about alliances between the oppressed and the power of that.
“Who is worse off?” is a common social justice question in every society. And it is NEVER helpful!!!! The question you should be asking is “Who is best off?” and just focus on that. Sai Pallavi’s uncle in this movie is destroying EVERYONE’S life. He is keeping Chai and his mother and friends in grinding poverty. And he is keeping his own brother’s family in misery. And he is bringing the worst ugliness down upon the unprotected young women in his family. That’s what this movie is about. The power of love is to let them share their story with each other, and ultimately see how they are alike, not different.
In both cases, their story is very VERY well done. We don’t just see one moment of oppression, we see the scars and crippling of a whole lifetime of oppression. When we meet Chai as an adult, he is fast talking and fearless. But he also warns off a young man of the neighborhood from following a rich young woman not like “them”. And he swallows the difficulty of getting a bank loan with no family behind him and the “wrong” kind of name. There’s a certain attitude, a “I am going to be loud and fearless and confident and nothing will stop me” vibe to it that we slowly see was the defense he built up to a lifetime of slights and injuries. Never let them see it hurts, never let them see that you see what they think about you.
And then there is Sai Pallavi. When we first meet her, she is desperate for a job in order to avoid staying back in the village. But she is also so stressed, she faints in a job interview as soon as they start questioning her at all. She has a hard time standing up straight, talking back to people, looking anyone in the eye. When she agrees to teach dance, she demands a promise that Chai will never touch her, when he does by accident she faints. Later he offers her a ride on his motorcycle and she admits that whenever she touches a stranger, she gets dizzy, so she is afraid to ride pillion on a motorcycle. We see her blossom in their freedom and friendship and, finally, their love story.
Chai’s trauma is there for everyone to see, he is clearly low caste. But Sai Pallavi’s is hidden, the way the trauma of women from powerful families is hidden. The audience knows Chai’s story from the start, but we can only guess at hers through subtle clues. She has an intense physical reaction to being touched. She is terrified of her uncle, to the point of locking her door and hiding, and he doesn’t seem surprised by this. She avoids dancing, and then comes alive when she finally gives into it. She had a bad academic career, she has a hard time focusing, she gets “emotional” for no reason. It’s all the signs of PTSD and a sexual assault survivor. They were there all along, we just had to put them together.
Late in the film, Sai Pallavi confronts her parents about how they always worried about her honor but never thought to worry about why she suddenly became afraid, crying, confused, stopped taking dance lessons, started avoiding going to school, never played with her friends any more, all of that. They didn’t care, they didn’t ask, because she was still being “proper”. And now, they care more about her having an undercaste boyfriend than about her uncle raping her!
This is the thing that was always there for us to see, it is the hidden message of women with “sharam” and the family honor. If your daughter prefers to hide at home, is afraid of boys, etc. etc., that’s not a good thing! That means you have successfully traumatized her so that she will never truly trust a man. What did you do to her???? Even Chai, when she first makes her “never touch me” demand, reads it as some perfect virtuous rich girl thing, doesn’t see it as the sign of trauma that it is.
At the end it is all about Chai supporting Sai Pallavi as she confronts her family. But until then, it was about her helping him confront society as a greater whole. He takes the blows again and again and just keeps working, but he never really dreams or hopes for anything. She blows all that up. She gets him to plan big for his business, she starts the love affair, she gives him all the things that his internalized protective inferiority would not let him risk. And because of her support of him all along, he is able to dream of being with this woman.
In broad outlines, this is a familiar story. Intercaste young love, touching romance, struggling with reality, blah blah blah. But I really like the execution! Even in the city, their caste differences are always hovering around them, and her PTSD is always there. But because they are in the city, they have the power to make a choice. They could break up, her family would never know, it would be fine. But instead they choose to find a way to make it work. And the movie chooses to honestly show just how hard that would be. You can’t just get married and move to the city, it’s not enough. You have to erase your entire life and start totally fresh, never to return home again. There is no power that can protect you, there is no simple talking it out solution, and you certainly can’t just “change their mind”.
It’s that last bit I found so refreshing. In Hindi films in particular, there is this need to win over the patriarch. He has to be forgiving and forgiven by the end of the film, his actions explained and excused away. Not in this case. Instead, the enablers who explain and excuse for him (his mother, his brother, his sister-in-law) are confronted with what they have allowed to happen, with the knowledge that a little girl knew, for a fact, that no one would ever side with her against her uncle and he could do whatever he liked to her. So no, their plan isn’t that he will sneak into her house and win over her family. Nor is it a self-sacrificing decision to do what her family thinks is best. They will do whatever it takes to escape and be happy instead.
And then the film kind of loses it’s way. That’s where the ending happens. Sigh. But it is SO GOOD up to that point! Such a wonderful case study of how social injustice affects individual people, and how finding love can change that.
dontcallitbollywood 
No specific thoughts, just a supportive comment that I really like how you’ve written about the movie!
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Thank you! And you agree about the STUPID ending?
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 6:12 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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It could have been better executed, but lots of covid allowances to be made.
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Honestly I didn’t even think they needed a courtroom scene or anything. It would have worked with the voiceover they used if they had just shown Chay getting released and reunited with Pallavi. As well as seeing them getting married with his friends, family, her mom, and sister there while the credits roll.
More than Covid, I’m kinda wondering if Shekhar Kammula really wanted to do one of those “realistic” endings where Chay is punished by going to jail. But he realized that’s not gonna work for the Telugu audience and this was his compromise? Idk, the ending was the most baffling part of the movie to me.
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Yes! The voiceover went so fast, and we just got this fuzzy still image of Sai going into court, I barely evne processed what happened before the end credits rolled. Let it breath a little!!!! Even if they couldn’t manage to shoot anything new, it would have been better to use a still of them together over the voice over and leave it up for just a few more minutes so we can realize it was a happy ending after all.
I don’t think a totally tragic ending would have fully made sense. Just because the movie was going for a strong message of “be fearless! Stand up for what you want/believe!” and having it be worthless wouldn’t have worked with that. But they could have had him taken away to jail, and then we see her visiting him, waiting for him like he told her to. So it’s not exactly the perfect happy ending, but they don’t just give up.
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 6:49 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes! The point about not letting it breathe is so true. Actually even the entire ending from when they’re running to the fight with the uncle happened way too fast. They really didn’t give the audience much time to process what was happening.
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That’s where it just feels like it MUST have been COVID issue. Every Sekkar movie I’ve seen has a rushed ending, but not THIS rushed. Like, I wasn’t going “what happened again?” when it was over.
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 7:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yeah, you’re probably right about Covid impacting the ending. It felt very uncharacteristic for a Kammula film.
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I know we all had a hard time with the ending of Fida because it felt kind of sudden and perfect out of nowhere. But we did get several good dialogue scenes setting it up and all of that at least. This movie, just punch punch, arrest, voice over, DONE.
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 8:05 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I really want to watch this again because the build up to Pallavi’s reveal really well done. Like there were so many hints but like you said, they are subtle compared to Chay’s struggles.
I honestly had a fear that Pallavi’s parents wouldn’t believe her because she’s always hated her uncle or not be willing to confront her uncle because he controls the family money. So it was such a relief to me to see how Pallavi’s mom reacts.
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Yes! I noticed the moment when Chai gave her the chocolate and she froze up and wondered about it, but it took me a long time put together the fainting spells with being touched by a man. And the very first time we see the uncle, I thought “why is she afraid of this nice man, he is getting out of his car to play cricket with the local kids”. And THAT WAS A CLUE! WHICH I TOTALLY MISSED!!!
I loved that her mother believed her because it ripped the curtain off of another hidden abuse. The way she flipped on a dime, clearly the mother has never had respect for her husband and just put up with her brother-in-law for the money but never liked him. And her life was decades of pretending, even to her own children, that she did follow the rules and respected her husband and so on, in order to survive.
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 7:01 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Oh yeah, I think the first time I noticed was when she goes to ask her uncle for the money and he wants her to come into the room alone and he tells her cousin not to come and it was like there must be a reason why she doesn’t want to interact with him without others around.
Oh wow! I totally missed the fact that he was playing cricket with the local kids…
Yeah, the way the mother reacted definitely shows that she was suffering too and she finally had a reason to take control or so to speak.
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That was the first time I was sure. Before that, I was thinking something really bad happened, or else Pallavi was just performing weird. The whole physical response to her uncle even calling on the phone seemed WAY over the top for a simple family issue.
Oh, did you notice how dance was threaded in too? We learn that he first molested her after a dance performance, taking something that gave her joy and turning it into something toxic. And then she finally got it back when she danced with Chai. Just as eventually she regained the ability to be touched, to feel love, to feel safe, all the stuff her uncle took away from her.
On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 8:02 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes! I loved how dance was something she loved that was taken away from her which she got back once she met Chay.
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Your review has me so excited to watch this film!!! I don’t think I can watch it in the theaters this weekend and I’m out town next weekend. But, I am hoping it will be streaming soon so I can watch it.
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Watch it this weekend! We’re doin’ the DCIB movie today, what else could you possibly have going on Saturday and Sunday?????
On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 7:33 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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My Saturday and Sunday are booked with real-people events! I have no idea how this weekend got so booked. Saturday, I have a friend’s baby shower and then dinner with another friend. Sunday, I have a spin class and brunch with my sister and a couple friends and then have to get some work done. When did life get to crazy!!! I just want to sleep and watch movies!
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See, this is why I think movie theaters should have 8am showtimes. For those of us who wake up super super early and could easily catch a movie before everything else, only IT ISN’T PLAYING. they have late late shows for the nightpeople, why not early early shows for the morning people?
On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 7:56 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Early morning shows would be amazing! This is why I love the Saturday morning watchalongs. I can be in bed with my computer and my headphones, sipping coffee, pleasantly starting my day. My husband is usually sleeping in next to me. When the movie’s over, we both get out of bed and start our day all happy because I had a a nice long wake up process and he got to sleep in without being disturbed.
On the other hand, I have fallen asleep many times in a theater during late night shows. I am not a night person and those reclining sofas in the theaters are a little too comfortable! Funny story: my parents used to say that they always took me to the 9:00 pm showing at theaters in India when I was little because the air conditioning, dark room, and the screen noise used to put me to sleep right away and they could happily watch the movie. Apparently, that was their weekend date night ritual and they never had to stop doing it even when I was born.
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Yes! I have spent many a Saturday driving to the one 10am show for the movie I want so I can have that pleasant start to the day.
On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 8:11 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Haha ikr, how nice would it be if we were to watch a movie early in the morning and start the day!
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It took me so long but I finally watched Love Story! The last 30 minutes are so stressful! I had to pause and play with my phone, becuse the tension was too high. The ending was bad, but at least nobody died so I’m happy. One of my favourite moments was when the police was coming for Naga and Sai said: I can’t live without you, I’ll die. And he answered: No, you must live. We must live.
It was so beautiful and strong.
The other moment I absolutely loved was Sai’s first dance. So beautiful. Like a breath of fresh air. I’m sure telugu dance schools had a lot of new clients after the movie released.
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I am so glad you watched it! Agree on Sai’s dance, and I love that they fell in love through dance.
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Falling in love through dance / falling in love after seeing person dancing is something I love the most. If I were a director/screenwriter I would have it in all my movies.
Other things I like in Love Story:
– Chai didn’t suck! I think he was one of the reasons why I avoided this film for so long. I couldn’t understand why a director like Shekar Kammula chose Chai in his film. I still think someone else would made a better job, but he wasn’t bad, and I loved those two scenes when Sai kissed him and he cried.
– Hero’s mother, especially in the first two minutes of the movie. She was strong and intelligent. She knew well her status in the village but she never made her son feel inferior, and right from the beginning she taught him the importance of the work and money.
– Hero and heroine’s plan wasn’t the best, and reminded too much of Romeo and Juliet’s stupid plan, but I really appreciated they were trying everything. I’m so tired of “the parents won’t approve, let’s jump off the waterfall” plots. Also for the last 2 weeks I’m trying to finish Kadhal. It’s super stressful film about a young couple who elope (also rich-poor, hindi-christian), but because it’s tamil film, of course the isn’t happy ending. Watching a couple who is one step ahead and knows that the parents will do everthing to find them, was very refreshing.
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Oh man, I forgot all the good things in this movie! That ending is so frustrating it makes me forget the good stuff.
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Yes! In fact with all those great things, this movie hasn’t become one of my favourites. It’s good, but I don’t feel like rewaching soon.
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