Chaar Lugaai

Chaar Lugaai story: Four women from a village in Uttar Pradesh seek intimacy from a local lout as their husbands visit them once every couple of years from the city. But the young man accidentally dies. The film revolves around how the women tried to cover it up.

Chaar Lugaai review: It’s an interesting concept about how married women are saddled with responsibilities, deal with loneliness and yearn for physical intimacy, as their husbands live in faraway cities where they quench their physical desires by visiting sex workers. But the weak story and treatment take away from the premise. Chaar Lugaai follows close friends Usha (Nidhi Uttam), Rashmi (Mansi Jain), and Meenu (Deepti Gautam), who seek intimacy from a local guy, Duggu (Abhinav Seeshore), as their fourth friend Ranju (Kamal Sharma) supports them in this endeavour.

Duggu has an accidental death and begins the saga of a cover-up, where Rashmi uses her charm to convince Dr Rastogi (Brijendra Kala) to help them dispose of the body. As Inspector Santosh (Saanand Verma) investigates the crime, if the women will be brought to the book forms the rest of the story.

Director Prakash Saini gives a mishmash of a crime thriller and tries to throw in some comedy and drama. But none of these hit the mark. The film’s treatment does no justice to the genres presented here. The village set-up and the characters’ looks and dialect are authentic. But the narrative is inconsistent as it oscillates between carrying a message and dealing with a weak plot. It focuses more on physical needs than longing for love and emotional support. The bit about the men in the family and neighbourhood eyeing the four friends seems a bit forced. The part where the four women try to justify their stance and talk about the unfair treatment isn’t as stirring as it should have been.

Nidhi Uttam and Mansi Jain act well as risqué women trying to get out of the pickle. Kamal Sharma, as the innocent and helpful Ranju, and Brijendra Kala are good in their roles. Saanand Verma performs sincerely and brings comic relief in almost every scene. The film has good music, whether it is Anup Bhat’s background score or Deepti Gautam’s compositions.

The four women’s shenanigans are mildly funny in bits, but otherwise, the movie has nothing to offer. The premise probably seemed interesting on paper, but the weak execution and writing don’t let the story take off.