Love Storiyaan review: Karan Johar’s web series celebrates the joys of real-life romantic diversity | Web-series News
Yeh kaisa pyaar hai, asks a personality in ‘Love Storiyaan’. Nothing uncommon, you may say, about Aekta Kapoor and Ullekh NP getting collectively. She, a North Indian Punjabi girl, comes with baggage from a failed marriage; he’s from Kerala, with a mom reluctant to simply accept that her beloved son may go in for such a ‘harmful’ relationship, versus a ‘regular’ marriage.
After assembly Aekta and her grown-up daughters and Ullekh and his mom, whom we see softening throughout their journey to the latter’s homestead in Kannur (An Appropriate Lady, directed by Hardik Mehta), we transfer on to the remainder: two radio jockeys, Hindu and Christian, assembly by way of an uncommon conduit (Love On Air, by Vivek Soni), a Hindu-Muslim couple coming again to Dhaka to relive their romance (Homecoming, directed by Shazia Iqbal), a Dalit-upper class Brahmin meet-cute within the backdrop of big-dam protests in Chhattisgarh (Raah Sangharsh Ki, by Akshay Indikar), an Afghan man and an Indian girl’s relationship cemented by distance (Faasley, by Archana Phadke), and two Kolkata-based people who discover their identities by way of a gender-switch (Love Past Labels, by Colin D’Cunha).
So what, you may say, there’s nothing new about individuals who’ve damaged the mould, whether or not it’s inter-state, inter-caste or inter-faith, to get hitched. And also you may be proper. However the cause ‘Love Storiyaan’, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, must be acknowledged is that it courageously celebrates the fun of romantic range at a time when the area for such issues is shrinking quickly.
Within the India of 2024, and particularly within the India of 2024, any ‘deviation’ from the norm is up for problem, particularly when the state is set to get into our bedrooms with a view to police the kinds during which we are able to love and dwell.
It’s on this background that this new present, fairly appropriately from Karan Johar’s steady, and executive-produced and conceptualised by Somen Mishra, turns into so valuable. It offers the people who find themselves retelling their love tales, in addition to us who turn into participatory viewers, an opportunity to rejoice the various hues of romance, to grasp that there isn’t a set assemble for folks to fall in love, that Cupid– that poor, overworked god of affection — can strike anytime, wherever. It offers us an opportunity to breathe freely, and to really feel all just isn’t misplaced.
The six tales, based mostly on journalists Priya Ramani, Samar Halarnkar and Niloufer Venkatraman’s Instagram web page, The India Undertaking, are clearly fastidiously chosen to signify completely different components of the nation, and completely different sorts of ‘love’. Not all six are equal. The most effective efforts are from Indikar and Iqbal, who preserve us with their narratives — the previous springs to life across the bright-faced Dalit activist Subhadra Khaperde who’s alive to the rhythms of her sexual life along with her associate; the latter does have the braveness to indicate us that not all homecomings are hunky-dory, and that you just carry your happiness with you. The opposite 4 are looser and never as impactful.
There’s additionally the presence of banal conditions, and whereas we do get that not all romance may be stuffed with drama as it will be too exhausting, we do hope that the following season takes care of this. The gadget of utilizing actors for flashbacks is extra annoying than ingenious, and the background music threatens to make issues generic. Actual-life love is and may be actually spiky, and we the viewers, can’t solely take care of it, however enjoy it.
ALSO READ | One Day assessment: The right Netflix sequence, a tear-jerker of Titanic proportions. 5 stars
However you then take a look at the faces of those lovers, who’ve fought the arduous struggle, and have made a house collectively within the face of large odds, and also you break right into a smile. Haan, yehi pyaar hai.
Love Storiyaan administrators: Hardik Mehta, Vivek Soni, Shazia Iqbal, Akshay Indikar, Archana Phadke, Colin D’Cunha.
Love Storiyaan ranking: 2.5 stars
