Tarla Review: The 2023 Hindi Tarla Dalal biopic chronicles some bits of the famous late Indian food journalist/chef’s life and how she finally climbed the ladder of success and became a household name. Huma Qureshi steps into her footsteps in the film, with Sharib Hashmi as Nalin Dalal, Veenah Naair, Bharti Achrekar, and Purnendu Bhattacharya playing significant roles. The slice-of-life Piyush Gupta directorial has a runtime of about 2 hours, and has been written by Gupta alongside Gautam Ved. It has been produced by Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP Movies and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari and Nitesh Tiwari’s Earthsky Pictures.
Tarla Review Does Not Contain Spoilers
Tarla Review: Discussion
The film picks up with the usual scene of a woman searching for her purpose in the world, when all those ideas and plans are called out to halt in motion because her marriage is to be arranged for. Starting with the picture of a young Tarla, who later became Tarla Dalal after marriage, the ZEE5 premiere follows the conventional dialogues of how she’ll be “free” to do whatever she wants to after marriage. And so, she’s soon wedded with Nalin Dalal and years pass away, with her being confined to the domestic sphere. Yet, one day, on the occasion of her own birthday, her old desire of wanting to do something, and be someone strikes her conscience again.
The initiation of her journey from being an amateur cook to switching over to the professional side starts out with a lighthearted, and minimally comical intervention as she takes on the role of a chef tutor advising young women off to be wedded soon.
In this way, what once kept her caged in the kitchen, ultimately becomes her professional calling and means of empowerment, which she further propagates to other young women of the day and age. The original premise helps change the audience’s purview of how a woman cooking in a kitchen, just as a means to complete her domestic duties, can also step into a professional stand if seen through a different lens.
Therefore, as far as the intentions of this illustration are concerned, the Hindi movie commences with a simple vision and starts out small from an all too familiar setting. Yet, as it progresses ahead, the pace and quality come falling apart. Qureshi emerges as a bit too naive version of the Indian chef, while Hashmi, who was initially presented as a likeable husband, eventually barely does anything to pique our interest and delight.
Moreover, despite the portrayal talking about marriage and its rather repressive hold over women in the Indian context, barely adds any weight to the conversation around subverting the heteronormative constructs holding these norms together. The movie maintains a rather neutral tone and leads with a composed ideal picture that doesn’t intend to significantly probe into the matter.
The more we race towards the end, the more melodramatic the movie gets. Sappy background scores or songs fill up the space in order to grant it the looks of a slice-of-life narrative while merely treading lightly around the subject. These theatrics result in redundancy and pull the story down with a monotonous finality.
Tarla Movie: Final Thoughts
Commencing with a heartfelt and feel-good approach, the film brought into conversation how the kitchen is often portrayed as a cage for women, leaving them with barely any window to look out into the world and pursue their ambitious pursuits. However, as the second-half of the film closed in, its theme and dialogues undermined the very context and message it sought out to reflect with good intentions first. The latter halftime ends up guilt-tripping the subject matter and social commentary it initiated at first. The same commentary also switches tones and becomes preachy, the one thing that instantly pulls away the audience’s attention from such portrayals.
While Tarla Dalal herself became a poster person for initiating a much-needed discussion back in the day, the movie, for me, fails to recreate the same magic this iconic Padma Shri award-winning chef once did on the Indian TV screens. The narrative falls prey of the same design that it had hoped to break free from, and that in itself is the major setback that derails this premiere.
Tarla (2023) starts streaming on ZEE5 on July 7, 2023.
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