My Dear Wife review: Truth has many layers in this husband-and-wife story

My Dear Wife is a conversation-led film where the lives of four characters are turned around in just one night.

The film begins with the usual banter between husband Sajan Anand (Jagat Rawat) and wife Ila Anand (Meenal Kapoor) as they return home from a party.

Ila invites the company's ambitious new finance head Vinit (Nakul Vaid) and his trophy wife Amy (Aakanksha Kadre) home for an afterparty. Sajan is unhappy initially but gives in to his visibly dominating wife.

Ila thinks of her husband, who is an assistant to the marketing head in her father's company, as a loser. She constantly nags Sajan who behaves quite obnoxiously at times and cracks silly jokes.

The mysterious daughter of the Anands is referred to in some conversations, creating some amount of intrigue.  

Once the guests arrive, slowly a regular middle-aged couple's banter degenerates into insults, then a quarrel and, soon enough, downright verbal abuse, revealing exactly how sour their marriage has turned over the years.

In the beginning Vinit comes across as the good-looking, well-mannered go-getter — an ideal husband — and Sajan as a bit crude, aimless man living off his wife.

But the truth may well be the opposite. There are many skeletons in the closets of both couples and as the conversation progresses the whole perspective of the viewer undergoes a major shift.

It's truly commendable how Samarpit Jain and Chandan Kumar have constructed a screenplay where every little action and word is crucial to the building of each of the four characters and the storytelling.

My Dear Wife is staged like a play and at slightly over two hours this conversation-heavy film gets just a little exhausting to watch.

And yet, there is always something more than what meets the eye, engaging you in the plot developments.

Jagat Rawat and Meenal Kapoor's fine performances enhance the potent screenplay by Jain and Chandan Kumar.

Rawat as the obnoxious but loving husband and Kapoor as the loud and demanding wife create a chemistry that is at times amusing and at times ugly.

Truth has many layers and so does Chandan Kumar's story-telling. He puts in one piece of the puzzle with each piece of conversation and the complete picture is formed only when the last piece is placed.

My Dear Wife was screened at the LIFFT India Filmotsav in Lonavala on 8 December 2018.