Tisca Chopra’s Saali Mohabbat gives you a similar Mephistophelean gratification that you might have experienced after watching Chutney, featuring Tisca Chopra—this time, Tisca occupies the director’s seat and delivers a well-nourished script, with an eerie storytelling. Featuring Radhika Apte, Divyenndu, Anurag Kashyap, and Sauraseni Maitra in pivotal roles, Saali Mohabbat tells you a story of how one’s love for botany can equally turn the flora into a fracture, fragmenting the society taken over by infidelity.
Saali Mohabbat begins with Radhika Apte finding out her husband is cheating. She is at a party. She does not make a scene, but slides in with a curated composure and narrates the tale of Smita.
Smita (Radhika Apte), who has certificates of excellence in Botany, is now just a devoted housewife. Her certificates of excellence, once gleaming with pride, now languish beneath a thick shroud of dust—mute witnesses to ambitions laid aside. But that did not pull the curtains on her love for the plants and the science behind them, but she is ‘naadan,’ Smita is dyslexic to ‘duniyadari,’ she is the woman, the world looks at and says—we can anytime fool her.
Predominantly, women in India have been treated like that—brainwashed to become housewives and eventually leave all their expertise behind, and just play the dumb supportive wife of their husband. Smita is apparently that, with no regrets, because she ‘chose’ to be with her husband and loves him, only to find him in the grips of lust, so much that he cheats on Smita with her cousin sister.
Shalini Saxena (Sauraseni Maitra), Smita’s cousin sister, steps in with a transformative charm, as Smita later describes Shalini. Smita’s husband, Pankaj Tiwari, engulfed with lust, becomes all hypnotised with Shalini’s charm. Shalini has the quotient that would make any man fall for her; she gets the local cop, Ratan Pandit (Divyenndu), into her orbit, too, and eventually gets involved with her brother-in-law. Smita finds out, but she maintains her cool.
Pankaj Tiwari is a compulsive gambler, now burdened by a crushing debt to a local casino owned by Gajendra (Anurag Kashyap). Pankaj appears to maintain a physical relationship with Smita, but like most Indian men, he is only bothered by his own needs—the film, in a very subtle sequential moment, catches upon the plights of the sexual needs of the two genders in the country. Yet, driven by his unchecked desires, Pankaj is drawn to Shalini and betrays his wife, the very person he relies on to save him from his mounting debts.
The narrative truly ignites when Pankaj and Shalini are found murdered, sparking a web of intrigue. Who committed the crime? Was Smita involved?
Ratan Pandit and Gajendra add appeal to the storyline, both flowing through Smita’s journey. While Anurag Kashyap’s and Divyenndu’s characters leave you wishing for more, it is Smita (Radhika Apte) who is the enigma throughout; her fate and choices drive the suspense.
Saali Mohabbat propels a familiar yet chilling exploration of betrayal, desire, and the strength of a woman forced to confront her own limits.
IWMBuzz rates it 3.5/5 stars.
