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.