Entertainment / Film Review: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Film Review: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Entertainment May 27, 2015

by Matthew Currie

A Warm, Intriguing Documentary Offers a First-Hand Look at the Current State of Arranged Marriage in India.

The quest for true love can be confounding — no matter which side of the world you happen to live on. Meeting someone with whom you’re compatible and who makes you feel that spark can seem like a statistical impossibility. And yet many who were born and raised in North America, if ever given the choice, would sooner stick to the bar scene than consider something so seemingly archaic, restrictive and even misogynistic as an arranged marriage.

These people would do well to check out director Rohena Gera’s What’s Love Got to Do With It? Which is not to say that this documentary makes the case for arranged marriage; rather, it puts a relatable human face to both sides of the debate.

Gera interweaves the stories of eight Indian men and women at varying stages in the arranged meeting and marriage process, cutting breezily from a happily married couple to a recently divorced man to several conflicted people in their late 20s and early 30s whose time working and studying abroad has made them less amenable to the institution.

All of the film's subjects are amiable and articulate, and they make for pleasant company over the 84-minute runtime. As they each sit and chat with Gera about their experiences, we hear the same longing, doubt and “we can laugh about it now” dating disaster stories you’d be liable to hear anywhere else in the world.

The voices of their' parents are also well represented. And despite the clear generation gap and the contradictory beliefs that go along with it, they mostly leave a positive impression. They may disapprove of their children’s dreams of “true love,” but on the whole they come off as concerned parents who want their kids to be happy and who are willing to be patient.

The divide between parent and still-single child mostly stems from the titular question. While the parents believe in finding a good match and growing to love the chosen partner, the kids — especially the ones who’ve been exposed to a Western lifestyle — prefer to fall in love.

The film opens up a thought-provoking examination of how people on both sides of the ocean have been indoctrinated when it comes to l'amour. In particular, Maulik, perhaps the most genuinely conflicted of the people Gera spotlights, says at one point that he doesn’t believe in the idea of “growing to love someone.” But in the next breath, he also questions whether this Hollywood notion of bumping into your soulmate at the coffee shop is possible either.

Have rom-coms sold us all a bad bill of goods? Is it better, as the profiled parents argue, to let the people who know you best do the research to find the right match? The film doesn't come to a definitive answer. What it does do is strike up a warm, thoroughly engaging conversation with the men and women currently grappling with this life-changing decision. It's a conversation that's well worth a listen — for believers and skeptics alike.

What's Love Got to Do With It? is currently in the midst of an On-Demand theatrical run in the United States. To request a screening in your area, visit whatslovethemovie.com.

^{_{Feature Image Courtesy of: Gathr Films}}
^{_{Blog Image courtesy of What's Love Press Kit}}

Matthew Currie

Author

A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...

Film Review: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

by Matthew Currie

Matthew Currie

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