Love Birds review: PC Shekar’s exploration of marriage is a mix of hits and misses

3/5

Story: Software engineer Deepak (Darling Krishna) and fashion designer Pooja (Milana Nagaraj), who hail from vastly different backgrounds, but live in Bengaluru, are a miraculous top match on a matrimony site. Their folks try to hook them up, and even though they attempt to get out of this match initially, Deepak and Pooja decide to give it a go after all. All is well initially, until minor misunderstandings get blown out of proportion, which is made worse when the families get involved. Can Deepak and Pooja iron out the kinks in their relationship and find a happily-ever-after or would it be better for them to go their separate ways?

Review: Love Birds is a strange name for a film about a couple struggling to adjust to a new life. But the film is not. In fact, PC Shekar’s story feels immensely relatable, right until the interval. The initial bits about how Deepak and Pooja realize that maybe they are meant to be together after all are a tad tedious, but what follows, including a rosy honeymoon period, after which their world implodes, is all presented so well, that it almost feels like a page out of any married couple’s life. Shekar had said that he studied the psychology of human relationships with respect to marriage intimately to present this film, and that reflects in how he presents the conflicts between Deepak and Pooja. Like, for instance, when Deepak orders a bean bag without consulting Pooja as a gift, only for her to rebuke him for buying something she doesn’t like, among many others.

The problem with how Shekar presents Deepak and Pooja is that she comes across as the more unreasonable one in all of their problems. It’s almost as if Shekar cannot bring himself to make Krishna the villain in the tale. It has to be the woman and she has to then understand the folly of her ways. How predictable, right! It is at this point that the narrative falters and begins to go downhill. This is a story about a married couple in India and despite their differences, they will have to figure out a way to find a way back into each other’s heart – this quest for the happily-ever-after is the Achilles Heel of this film. Why is it so unthinkable for Shekar that his protagonists could perhaps find happiness with different partners and not each other?

Darling Krishna and Milana Nagaraj are the main pillars of Love Birds and the real-life couple’s chemistry works well for the film, perhaps, even better than it did in Love Mocktail 2. Samyukta Hornad, as their lawyer Maya, does a neat job, which would have been better if the actress were allowed to dub for herself. The voice used in the film does not do justice to her. Veena Sundar, Rangayana Raghu and Sadhu Kokila, as the other family members, have limited but noteworthy roles.

Verdict: So, where does that leave Love Birds? Here is a film that had the potential for greatness, but floundered along the way. If only Shekar had gone the whole mile and presented a modern-day relationship as it is today, instead of trying to fold it all into his or society’s idea of how Indian couples should be – all suffering and forgiving (at least one party). This is a film that will, no doubt, appeal to those with old-school ideas of how marriage should be. For me, the appeal ran out during the interval.