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‘Laapataa Ladies’ Review: A Feel-Good Social Dramedy Represents India at the Oscars


'Laapataa Ladies,' Kiran Rao's return to directing, is a clockwork tale of swapped wives. It is India's Oscar submission for international feature.

This mode of storytelling can be heavy-handed for the sake of mass appeal, but director Kiran Rao deftly combines the literal and symbolic, resulting in a crowd-pleaser filled — for better or worse — with innate goodness. A passenger train plays host to a case of mistaken identity when young, lovelorn newlyweds Deepak Kumar (Sparsh Shrivastava) and Phool Kumari (Nitanshi Goel) are separated in an accidental spouse swap en route to the former’s village. She ends up stranded on a railway platform, and is soon taken in by a band of free-spirited strangers leading solo lives, including an elderly cook at a local food stall (Chayya Kadam), whose no-nonsense attitude Phool finds alluring.

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