Uday Bhatia

Sometimes you get what you want, but it’s not what you need. Since 2018, Raj & DK have been on a creative streak. It began with Stree, a horror-comedy sleeper hit they wrote and produced. The following year, their first series, The Family Man, premiered on Amazon Prime; they show-ran and co-directed it over two seasons (a third is in the works). This was followed by two more shows, Farzi (on Amazon)—my favourite of their long-form work—and Guns & Gulaabs (on Netflix). With each success, the possibility that Hollywood would come calling seemed likelier.

Do Patti begins with scattered shots of paragliding gone wrong and a stakeout on a bridge, followed by a woman in a police station telling the cops her husband tried to kill her. Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba, released in August, also has a stakeout on a bridge, and its first scene is a woman in a police station telling the cops her husband is going to kill her. Both films are written by Kanika Dhillon, both are Netflix releases. Did no one think it was a problem that the films start the exact same way?

Aman in red suede pants and jacket walks down a deserted road at night. Another man in a sky blue jacket over a black shirt races across a bridge as gunfire explodes around him. Yet another, in a deep blue shirt knotted at the waist, staggers out of a warehouse and is immediately carried off by a delirious crowd chanting his name.

Satya has been running from window to window in the anteroom of a maximum security prison. She’s desperate to see her brother before closing time, but there are forms to fill, procedures to follow. Finally, she ends up at the door to the visiting area, wheezing, frantic. The guard does her a kindness, says she isn’t late and will be let in soon. Satya catches her breath, but can’t wipe the worry off. “Do I look sad?” she asks the guard as she’s about to enter. “Little sad,” he replies in Malay-accented English. She puts on a strained smile. “Now?” The guard shakes his head. “Very sad, lah.”

Well into CTRL, we know the film’s protagonist only as Nella. While it’s certainly an Ananya Panday character name (past ones have been Tia, Tanya, Ahana and Bella), I did wonder if it was given by her Delhi Punjabi parents. But then we hear her father’s voice from offscreen calling: “Nalini”. And a little piece clicked into place: an assumed name, a username, a handle, in a film about unstable online identities.