Love Per Sq Foot- Worth 'buying'

Love Per Square Foot” is a funny and poignant dramatization of the real-estate crisis plaguing millennials in Mumbai who also have to deal with familial pressures. As I watching love per sq foot, I was reminded of another 3-min Tamil short film that showed the plight of house-hunters. Even though the crux of both stories are almost similar, love per sq foot has dealt with the issue in a light-hearted way. 

Owning a piece of land/home is one of the things on the ‘to-do’ list of many young people who wish to have ticked that off by their mid-thirties. For some, it is the ‘to-achieve’ list especially in nations that associate owning a home with craving freedom and success. This is what director and writer Anand Tiwari, has beautifully explored in Love Per Sq Foot (Netflix original). As a writer, Anand has also highlighted many other themes like love and relationships, love and religion, love and marriage, love and parents-approval. And one of the reasons for the roaring success of love per sq foot is how moments of hilarity perfectly weaved all these serious notions in a bundle of joy. 

Amazingly performed by many noteworthy supporting characters, there’s genuine laughter in the almost all interactions between the characters. There is so much of great energy bouncing off in every narrative progression in the story line as it bops along, revealing the constant battle for identity, privacy, courage, validation and time that everyone yearns for. I particularly love the mother-daughter portions between Karina (played by Angira Bhar) and Blossom (played by Ratna Pathak). A true depiction of everyday struggles between Indian parents and grown-up kids. 

There is a scene where Karina visits Sanjay (Vicky Kaushal) at his place, a one-room government flat and he welcomes her at the small-doored entrance. She asks him, “Can we go to your room and have a chat?” 

He instantly replies, “I don’t have a room. I sleep in the hall”

Towards the end, when Karina manages to get her own place and gets ready for her wedding, Blossom, beaming with pride, looks at Karina and tells ‘when I come to visit you from Canada, I can tell proudly that I am going to stay in my daughter’s house.’

These two scenes encapsulate everything that the film wants to convey- how much a house, place of their own, means for them. So well-written that I felt Love Per Square Foot is what happens when you have phenomenal talent, a stellar cast, the right intentions and sharp writing all pumped into one film.

There is another scene where Sanjay’s parents and Karina’s mother meet to arrange their marriage. Even though they had their mixed reactions, they decided to get them married off. At one point during their conversation, Sanjay’s mum, a typical north-Indian mother, calls Blossom as 'Balsam behen' and Sanjay’s father calls Karina as Karishma. I burst out laughing while watching this scene. It all goes to show how much we want to accept everyone and at the same time, how deeply rooted we are in our world. 

Of course, there are some dull moments in the second half as the squabbles and arguments between Karina and Sanjay got a bit repetitive. Things go a bit haywire as the second half of the film just sped through many important moments in a very filmy manner. However, the cast manages to pull it off extremely well with their performance. It is like a game of football, where you are passing the ball and somebody will eventually score the goal, but it is as important to keep the ball passing Even though it went filmy in the 2nd half, the actors played off each other. They took the part and allowed the other person to perform too, making it enchantingly captivating to watch till the end of the ‘love match’. 

Watch 'love per sq foot' on Netflix!