DO NOT read this without seeing the movie! It’s a film that will reward re-watching, but you really should experience it first without knowing what is coming, it was built to provide surprises, let the film do what it was intended to do. And then, AFTER watching it, come back here to discuss.

Whole Plot in One Paragraph:

A fitness trainer is found murdered at the exclusive Royal Delhi Club. Pankaj Tripathi, the police detective called to help, quickly learns the trainer was blackmailing most of the club members. Tripathi is helped by Vijay Varma (really REALLY good actor, played the car stealing best friend in Gully Boy) who is a sincere lawyer, child of the token middle-class club members. And by Sara Ali Khan, very wealthy troubled widow and ex-girlfriend of Vijay Varma. Slowly he learns all the secrets of each member and comes close to solving the mystery. First he thinks that Sanjay Kapoor, descendent of royalty and loudmouth member, killed the drug dealing abusive husband of a club employee in defense of her. He buried the body in the club gardens with the help of long time employee Brijandra Kala. He killed the trainer because he was being blackmailed, then killed Brijandra Kala to cover his tracks. But that isn’t true, Sanjay Kapoor is secretly poor and in a relationship with a male club employee, that is what he was being blackmailed for. And his boyfriend can give him an alibi. And the abusive husband turns out to be alive after all. Next, Suhail Nayyar, troubled young drug addict, is found almost dead in his bathtub with a confession note. Suhail was obsessed with Sara Ali Khan, he killed HER husband who is the body buried in the garden, then killed the trainer for blackmailing him, and Pankaj Tripathi for helping him. But no, he wasn’t organized enough to do it and he didn’t have access to the murder weapon (a bust with a particular tile decoration that was found with the body). So then, Pankaj lands on the best answer, Vijay Varma. He loved Sara and killed her husband in a fit of rage then hid the body. He killed the blackmailer, he killed Pankaj, and finally he tried to frame his trusted friend Suhail for the murder. It seems like the perfect answer. But the final twist, Pankaj only pretended to arrest Vijay in order to force Sara to confess. She killed her husband and everyone else. She loves Vijay and she also loves her position and the Royal Delhi Club and will kill to protect all of them.

As a viewer, we go into this film and this setting with two big assumptions. First, rich people=bad and heartless. Club workers=good and big hearted. Second, lovely young couple investigating murder=innocent and romantic. The first assumption is very slowly overturned one by one through the film. The second assumption comes crashing down in a heap in the last 5 minutes. Brilliant construction!

Sanjay and Karisma’s characters have the most dramatic shift. Karisma is a B-movie actress, glamorous and perfect and confident. But her secret is that, as a teenager, she gave birth and her mother hid the baby in an orphanage. The crippled poor drunken orphanage warden is her son. And Sanjay Kapoor, it’s not just that he is poor and irons his own one nice suit for his nightly trips to the club, it’s that he is gay and in a relationship with a trainer at the club. These lines that seemed so strong at the beginning mean nothing at all. Karisma’s son and Sanjay’s boyfriend are across vast class gaps, and it doesn’t matter.

But what I find more interesting are the smaller shifts in our perception of the characters. Tisca Chopra is an incredibly superficial younger wife of a rich man, constantly bragging about her stepson and lying about how perfect her life is, while being casually cruel about others. And then at the end, she finds her stepson drowning in the bath, rescues him, and shows up at the denouement meeting ready to spit venom at the other women and the police to protect him. When all her superficial coating is stripped bare, she is a desperate mother trying to save her son. Even if her son himself disrespects her as a golddigging second wife. She’s still a selfish horrible woman, and yet also a passionate mother. People can be two things!

The murder victim, the trainer/blackmailer, he is torturing these rich people over their secrets and delighting in it. But on the other hand, he is taking all his blackmail money and giving it to the orphanage where he grew up. One moment that really stood out to me, we cut from the rich club members partying to the servant party in the back which is just as full of alcohol, dancing, relationship drama, and everything else. Neither side is innately different from the other, class and money and prestige truly mean nothing. Along with all of Sanjay’s other secrets and surprises, he explains that he was paying the blackmail to protect his boyfriend, not himself! Being gay is fine for him, he is a widower with no family. But his boyfriend is a younger man working for a living, he has more to lose. Who would have thought? All these little surprises.

And then there’s the big surprise, that Sara is HORRIBLE. And yet, everything else we were told about her is also true. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother mentally ill, the club was her own safe space as a child. She loves Vijay Varma deeply and always has. She is lost after the end of her marriage. All of those things are true. And also true is that she gave up Vijay to marry for money and stay at her social level, and then is so desperate not to lose her place in the club, her fragile sense of belonging, that she killed her husband rather than letting him leave her. And then killed 2 more people to protect her secret, and 1 final person to protect Vijay Varma. The twist isn’t that she was “faking” the whole time, but that all the things we saw were true and she STILL killed people. Just as all those bad selfish moments in other characters were true, and yet they still did very good things. People are complicated.

There are only two mysteries left at the end of the film. And I am DYING to discuss them with y’all!

First, did Vijay Varma really have a girlfriend in Calcutta or was that a lie he told his parents to get them off his back, and Sara to make her jealous?

Second, will Vijay give in to his love for Sara and become her lawyer, or will he break free of her spell?

Oh, and bonus discussion question, who was your favorite character?

I loved loved loved Karisma! Very power lady.