Dil Kabaddi

Spanking. Whips. Masks. The only thing missing is handcuffs. Or maybe they got shoved under the jumble of sheets on the bed, during the strenuous activity thereon?

Dil Kabaddi tells you Everything You Wanted To Know About An Urban Marriage But Were Too Petrified To Ask: four years down the line, boredom sets in whatever happened to the seven year itch?, and there are enough men and women out there who are itching to romp, regardless of marital vows. Fidelity, what8217;s that?

Meet Samit Irrfan and Mita Soha, who turn the constant sniping into separation. Their best friends Rishi Rahul Bose and Simi Konkona are at a similar pass, but they don8217;t know it. Yet. Mita8217;s too intellectual, declares Samit, and clutches the willing bosom of yoga instructor Kaya Payal. Rishi, who teaches nubile young ladies the art of writing, starts coming on to a kohl-eyed, sexy student Saba. Your script is sooo wonderful, he says. Really sir, she smiles, all lush invitation

Everyone is too something: Samit is too bored, Mita is too fond of art movies, Rishi is too pliant, and Simi is too passive-aggressive. Even the bit players are excessive: Kaya is too into soups and salads, and screaming, and Veer Rahul Khanna is too much of a wuss to do anything. In the beginning, it8217;s all quite amusing: we know people like this, and yeah, marriages can turn into dull swamps where the only excitement seems to come from the outside, and the only people who can spark it are sensualists in touch with their hot bods. The main leads look as if they could be couples in real life, and some of the lines are very, very funny.

Where it scores is in the way Dil Kabaddi talks, unself-consciously and very naturally, of sex, and size, and inflatable dolls, and long-lashed whips 8220;Yeh Bandra se liya ya Bangkok se?8221;, and other objects of that nature. But having pushed Bollywood8217;s carnal boundaries, the film seems to lose its way, and doesn8217;t quite know how to wrap. So Samit wants to come back to Mita, so what? So Simi is agonising, yet again, about Veer. Wow, really. By the end, when the bedsprings have stopped creaking, and the pairs have shuffled into new positions, you8217;re quite happy to let the quartet be. Or should that be a sextet?

High point of the film: the first-rate Irrfan being made to wear, by his vegetarian paramour, a thong.

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