Prisoners of Love

Metro…In Dino | Director: Anurag Basu | Cast: Konkona Sen Sharma, Pankaj Tripathi | Hindi

Anthologies are easy to watch and difficult to film. They need great actors, good connecting stories, and superlative writing. Metro…In Dino has most of those elements, but also has a skewed sense of love. Kajol (Konkona Sen Sharma) is married to Monty (Pankaj Tripathi) who lingers on a Tinder-like app. Her sister Chumki (Sara Ali Khan) is in a relationship with an overly suspicious colleague. Their mother Shibani (Neena Gupta) has been cheated on by their father. The fourth couple lives the double income-no kid dream until her desire to have a baby and his ambition of becoming a singer interfere. All the alternatives the women are given seem preferable to their old lives of compromise, but only one of them tries to find someone worthy, a unicorn in this set-up. If this is love in the 21st century, then no thanks. The men seem collectively awful. Shibani is supposed to be charmed by her gaslight­ing husband when he gets into a fight with her old boyfriend (Anupam Kher) but is not. The fourth couple, Shruti and Akash, make marriage seem like such a chore that lifelong singledom seems preferable. Life in a… Metro (2007) was refreshing, light, and felt quietly liberating. Love in 2025 seems a prison no one seems to want to leave. Even Pritam and Papon, singing their lungs out, cannot save this advertisement for loveless lives from itself.

About The Author

Kaveree Bamzai

Kaveree Bamzai is an author and a contributing writer with Open

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