Do Aur Do Pyaar Director Shirsha Guha Thakurta Says Vidya Balan & Pratik Gandhi’s Film Is Not About Adultery, “No One Was Playing The ‘Other’” – Exclusive
Koimoi spoke to the film's director, Shirsha Guha Thakurta, and asked her about bringing a good balance to the story without glorifying anything and the response to the Vidya and Pratik starrer.
Do Aur Do Pyaar Director Shirsha Guha Thakurta. (Photo Credit – Youtube)
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Do Aur Do Pyaar, starring Vidya Balan, Pratik Gandhi, Sendhil Ramamurthy, and Ileana D’Cruz, was released in theatres on April 19, 2024. This romantic comedy, directed by Shirsha Guha Thakurta, mostly received positive reviews. It tells the story of a married couple in Mumbai who have forgotten what it’s like to love each other. The husband and wife find comfort and affection in someone else, but circumstances remind them of how much they were in love in the past, reigniting their romance.
Suprotim Sengupta, Amrita Bagchi, and Eisha Chopra wrote the film’s story. What makes “Do Aur Do Pyaar” such an endearing watch is the rawness in its execution and how authentic the emotions of love and heartbreak feel. Vidya Balan and Pratik Gandhi’s chemistry is also a winner. Koimoi spoke to the film’s director, Shirsha Guha Thakurta, and asked her about bringing a good balance to the story without glorifying anything and the response to the Vidya and Pratik starrer.
Read our excerpts from Do Aur Do Pyaar director Shirsha Guha Thakurta’s interview below –
Do Aur Do Pyaar is one of the best Hindi films I’ve seen about a broken marriage or infidelity. Suprotim Sengupta and Eisha Chopra wrote the story, and you joined later. How did you strike a balance, making it look so clean, sensible, and impactful?
Shirsha: The writers and I wanted to tell a story about modern real life in love. We were very clear about the objective right from the start. We wanted it to be humorous and not very heavy. Once all this is set, decisions become easy to make. We were always drawing from our personal lives and from those of our friends, colleagues, and families. We just wanted to make a film that we could relate to, people that we could understand, a world that we see around us. It’s complicated and messy, but there is hope, joy and emotion.
The movie has mostly received praise, but there’s also a conversation about whether it promotes extramarital affairs or cheating. But that’s clearly not the case, because we don’t see the characters having a “happy” ending with the choices they make. What do you have to say about this kind of reaction?
(Photo Credit – Youtube)
Shirsha: From the beginning, we were clear that we did not want to tell a story about adultery and cheating – it was always a love story in our heads. All the characters are genuinely in love at the moment. No one was playing the ‘other’, no one was in it for a lark, for an easy time. It meant something to them. The heartbreak was real, the laughs were real, the tears were real, the intentions were real. They just got caught up in a mess that love and life sometimes tend to become. This allowed us to look at them through a non-judgemental lens.
There were no villains, only ordinary people grappling with a messy situation. We hope people will see them like that, too. Just real people living their lives. Love is not a simple binary equation, and we wanted to speak about that. We were not promoting anything actually (neither marriage nor extramarital affairs), just showing what love can look like when it gets old.
Do Aur Do Pyaar stays with you also because of the songs. What motivated you to choose artists or bands like The Local Train or When Chai Met Toast over any popular Bollywood music composer?
Shirsha: I have been a huge fan of the Indie music scene for a long time and have been following their music for years. I felt some of their songs were truly able to capture the essence of the film.
There are many things about ‘Do Aur Do Pyaar’ that fascinate me, including the jobs of these characters. Vidya is a dentist; Pratik runs a cork business (so unheard of), and Ileana is an aspiring actress. Was it intentional to have characters with jobs that many of us are doing or to show that anyone around us could be Kavya and Ani?
Shirsha: We wanted the film and the characters to be very real and relatable. We didn’t want to glorify anything or anybody. We wanted people to be able to see bits of themselves in our characters. Hence we thought of everyday mundane things that people do.
