Jayant Digambar Somalkar’s A Match begins with a dream. Savita (Nandini Chikte) sits before a suitor, flanked by female friends, and appraises the young man. With a mischievous grin, she asks him for his mother’s maiden name, his height, his studies. She sits almost manspreading, confident and playful, in a way of being not allowed to Savita in her real life. But the dream is swiftly shattered as we cut to the present day, with Savita, her gaze downcast, being asked to take the spot that the boy in her dreams had taken. She is asked for her mother’s maiden name, her height, her studies. She is being interviewed, being observed, being considered by a boy’s family, who swiftly determine that she will not make for a good match – she is too short for them.
Savita’s parents’ dream is shattered, but Savita herself is ambivalent. She just wants to complete her studies. A Match shows that it’s a swift and nuanced dichotomy, between a parent’s desires and a young woman’s dreams.
Carried by Chikte’s star-making performance, A Match is an incendiary achievement for its marriage of romantic turns with searing but delicate realism, and because the film practices the respect that is crucial to examining and deconstructing a controversial and oftentimes taboo topic of arranged marriages — it tackles the topic not as a judgemental outsider, but an experienced insider. It doesn’t just lay bare what the process of procuring an arranged marriage looks like, it also shows us what these marriages mean for a family, the salutary weight they carry, and the weight of a refusal or postponement.
Somalkar filmed the movie in his home village of Dongargaon, and many of the people who appear in the film are people he knows. With an incisive and gauzy gaze, Somalkar follows Savita as she approaches the final year of her B.A. in sociology, studying to complete her final exams. Savita loves her studies, and is good in school. When it comes to marriage, she doesn’t much care, leaving for the most part all arrangements up to her parents, who tirelessly look for a match. She sits for interviews before suitors, answering again and again the same questions about her height and her hobbies, and gets rejected repeatedly for one inconsequential reason or another. We learn early on (in dreamily romantic slow-motion sequences inspired by In the Mood for Love) that Savita has a secret but reciprocated crush on her teacher, and hopes he will make a move. The film tenderly follows Savita as she balances her school work with the work she must perform to secure a match, and Somalkar is equally tender as he depicts Savita’s parents’ pain and worry.
A Match reveals what a marriage means for a family in a small village in India — it portends hope for the entire family, the lessening of a financial anxiety, allows younger siblings to be married off, quells others’ judgemental gazes. The film is shrewd but also understanding as it reveals the multifaceted reasons behind parents’ ultimate goal of marrying off their kids. Somalkar balances heartbreaking realism with wry comedic timing to consider a family’s relationship with land, a father’s burden of duty, and a young girl’s dream. In one beautifully stylized sweep, the film examines the marital traditions that have been followed by the people of Dongargaon for years, and observes with respect a young woman’s desires and aspirations.
In a particularly poignant scene, we follow Savita and her parents to a communal matchmaking event, which requires young men and women to list off their attributes and achievements into a microphone; if any family is interested, they may approach them afterwards. As Savita and her parents walk away from the event, without any potential matches, Somalkar captures the weight lying heavily across Savita’s and her father’s shoulders. Her father is visibly contorted with worry, but so is Savita, for she knows how anxious her parents are about getting her married off. In fact, Savita is doubly worried: she knows what it means in her village when a woman hasn’t been married off swiftly enough, what it would mean for her family’s name, and, what’s more, the question of whether she will be able to complete school and go to grad school hangs over her. Somalkar conveys all this and more in Savita’s family’s silent walk away from the matchmaking event.
Chikte is a natural marvel in this film, allowing us to feel Savita’s angst in a twitch of her lips, the wetting of her eyes, the arching of her brows. Dialogue is sparse in this film, and Chikte handles this challenge marvelously. As she sits before a mirror getting ready for one of those interviews that require her to list of all the same answers, those unchanging attributes about herself, Chikte writes on Savita’s face her angst and worry, showing through wet eyes, tears held back, and quivering lips, the weight of expectations Savita feels, the battle her psyche is raging within her — she wants so terribly to make her parents proud, but she also has dreams, goals for herself. It’s this feeling of watching a building suspended in a state of collapse that Chikte shows us, and for this reason reveals her star material, her mettle as a young actress with greatness in her future.
A Match will surprise you in unexpected ways. It will make you laugh and it will make you weep, but what is for certain is that you will find your heart falling madly in love with Chikte’s sweet, complex Savita, a character who will stay with you forever.
