On demand: "Laapataa Ladies"

Given the ideological violence, codified or otherwise, which has set audiences running from the cinema in their droves over recent months, it's a relief to be confronted with a Hindi film that still feels capable of gentility, that isn't merely thumping us around the head with a recruiting manual for the better part of three hours. Kiran Rao's Laapataa Ladies is a deft and endearing fable, set in a 2001 that seems like tangible ancient history, and founded on an amusingly simple muddle involving nervy newlyweds who've barely tied the knot when they unknowingly stumble towards partner-swapping. Bumfluffed groom Deepak (Sparsh Shrivastava) gets the shock of his young life when the bride he's dragged off the midnight train to meet his parents lifts her veil to reveal a face he's never seen before; the mix-up, it transpires, was the result of a surfeit of veiled brides travelling on the same cross-country service, and some decidedly suboptimal seating arrangements. Such a breach of nuptial decorum would probably in itself be enough to sustain a feature-length comedy-drama, but screenwriter Sneha Desai, working from a story by Biplab Goswani, also explores complications involving the other corners of this accidental love quadrangle. The other woman, the progressively minded Jaya (Pratibha Ranta, who presents with something of Sonam Kapoor's poise), realises this snafu might actually work in her favour, swiftly torching the SIM card connecting her to her betrothed as if she were Jason Bourne; it's thus no real shock when we discover said betrothed, the brooding Pradeep (Bhaskar Jha), is a possessive drunk who's been accused of burning his first wife. And then there is the hardly small matter of Deepak's abandoned beloved, the spooked, unworldly, doe-like Phool (Nitanshi Goel), who descends from the fateful train in an unfamiliar part of the countryside, and finds herself at the mercy of complete strangers.

The opening hour suggests farce slowed down to the pace of an Ealing comedy, the better for us to savour this script's generous story and character beats, and the jokes that bubble up organically from its premise. Phool sees her name inscribed in an exasperated stationmaster's lost-property ledger, alongside the umbrellas and spectacles; an openly corrupt police chief (the terrific Ravi Kishan), who accepts bribes in the form of banknotes or songs, commends Deepak on managing to throw off his other half mere days into wedlock ("I've been trying for years"). In the span of attitudes and personalities it describes, Laapataa Ladies qualifies as a triumph of casting: even the walk-on roles are filled perfectly, and some cosmic matchmaking is evident between the leads. We're never allowed to believe Shrivastava's shy, sleepy Deepak stands a chance with Jaya - not when he's so felicitously paired with Goel's Phool. If the film eventually shades into seriousness - towards notably higher stakes - it's led there by the women. Not just the brides, forced to make their own ways in a society offering them scant encouragement, but those around them, like Manju Maai (Chhaya Kadam), the lived-in chaiwalli who takes the hapless Phool under her wing, telling her the greatest con ever pulled on the fairer sex - limiting their potential in one fell rhetorical swoop - was the notion of "the honourable woman". In a better world, one so wise and so pragmatic with it would be running her own country; here, she's frying bread pakora and hoping things work out for the best. Rao and Desai wear their feminism lightly, setting out characters rather than statements, but those characters' interactions do serve as a rallying call for women to be more forceful about who they are and what they want to be, where they're going and what they say and do there. (The better not to be so interchangeable - or, worse still, dispensable.) The point gets underlined by the elegant, outgoing Ranta and the adorable, homely Goel, giving the most skilfully differentiated and affecting performances in the entire film. "Learn to keep your eyes down," Phool is instructed by her family early on, the kind of dyed-in-the-wool, long-in-the-tooth non-wisdom that proliferates in stagnating societies. Rao's eyes remain open, alert to change and forever forward-facing, which is why Laapataa Ladies works so well as entertainment, but also - particularly in its home stretch, which gifts us the gleeful, Shakespearian spectacle of justice being properly served - as a vision of how India might well better itself, far away from all the flags and guns.

Laapataa Ladies is now streaming on Netflix.