Love Per Square Foot Review (2018)

The premise itself is absolutely kickass. Two people a female and a male, naturally, who are suffering the middle class difficulties of own housing, plan to fake marry to access a housing scheme for couples. But as things take place inevitably, they fall in love and what happens forms the rest.

Let me seriously get the negatives out of the way because they are so few and so I get a larger amount of time to guffaw about the positives. The way the central characters fall in love is too easy (which I do get is quite normal in these rom-coms), despite the fact that both are in a relationship, though seeing those relationships we know that they are superficial. And also structurally, the film, though slightly subverts the love, fight and love again forever arc of rom-coms by keeping the fight by the last half hour of the film, suffers as the main goal of getting a house seems easily achieved as both of them have actually begun really loving each other. So after a point, the fight and the reason for the fight seems only to prolong a story that should have been finished sometime before. Also, though the songs are not speed-breakers or anything, 1 particular song’s first half just doesn’t feel something the characters would engage in given their nature.

But it doesn’t necessarily affect you because the cast is an absolute bomb. While of course Vicky Kaushal (as Sanjay) and debutant Angira Dhar (as Karina) are great and have great chemistry, it is Ratna Pathak Shah as Karina’s mother and Raghubir Yadav and Supriya Pathak as Sanjay’s parents who take away the best acting credits.

They are so in connect with the feel of their character that they don’t feel like they are acting at all. May it be Ratna Pathak’s broken Hindi or Raghubir’s eccentricities, all of them are really endearing as much as they are. The film’s best scene is definetly one involving Raghubir Yadav, who is retiring. The way the scene takes place, affects you emotionally in such a beautiful way and that’s primarily because the way the film is written. The basic wants that the characters have touches you in the hilarious opening sequence which sets up pretty much most the plot points and wants that the character’s including supporting ones have. But what is also great is the constant tone the film is able to maintain, despite the little issues the characters face, has such a comic sense to them, that you are bound to laugh at atleast one of them. A particularly impressive one is where Karina breaks up with her BF Samuel or the one where Sanjay’s dominating boss and her boyfriend get a revelation about the boss’s character in their office. They have really good editing and framing that complements the tone the film is going for.

And when shit becomes serious, it really does feel serious and not something that’s jarringly off putting despite the fact that one of the serious scenes is right after the revelation sequence mentioned above in Sanjay’s and Karina’s office (they are co-workers).

All of it is endearing and comes together in a beautiful way.