Lost Ladies

Directed by Kiran Rao, Lost Ladies follows two young brides, Jaya (Pratibha Ranta) and Phool (Nitanshi Goel), as they’re forced to fend for themselves after a mixup at a train station. There’s little doubt, ultimately, that Lost Ladies fares best in its deliberate yet relatively compelling opening stretch, as filmmaker Rao, armed with a script by Sneha Desai, Biplab Goswami, and Divyanidhi Sharma, does an effective job of establishing the affable central characters and their appealingly remote environs – with Rao’s exceedingly (and eventually excessively) lackadaisical sensibilities initially not quite as problematic as one might’ve anticipated. It’s disappointing to note, then, that Lost Ladies slowly-but-surely wears out its welcome as it progresses into a padded-out, meandering midsection, with the arms-length atmosphere exacerbated by an inexplicably epic runtime and an emphasis on desperately unfunny comedic attributes. (This is particularly true of everything involving Ravi Kishan’s wildly, gratingly over-the-top turn as a local police officer.) By the time the feel-good but rather endless final stretch rolls around, Lost Ladies has cemented its place as a well-intentioned misfire that could (and should) have topped out at around 90 minutes.

** out of ****