Direction: Roshan Sethi
Country: USA
7 Days, a confined yet colorful rom-com pulled out from the Covid-19 era, centers on two young Indian Americans - Ravi (Karan Soni) and Rita (Geraldine Viswanathan) - whose traditional parents set up their profiles on a popular dating website in hopes they find love and get married. He is abstemious, repressed, a compulsive cleaner and an impersonator, as well as an avid talker who only watches Bollywood. Much more aggressive in posture, she is a heavy drinker and meat eater, a terrible cook who is in a forbidden relationship with a married man.
Their hilarious first meet up - a picnic in an empty reservoir - doesn’t spark any chemistry, and to make things more uncomfortable and inconvenient, they are burdened with a stay-indoors order for a couple of days due to pandemic restrictions. Gradually revealing their true personalities, secrets and vulnerabilities, these two lonely and dissimilar beings suddenly realize they can fall in love if they care for each other and get in sync.
Co-written and directed by Roshan Sethi, and produced by the Duplass Brothers, the film is somewhat predictable but to the point, incorporating a few zany situations that really made me laugh. The two leads, keeping the excitement moving like a house afire, not only engage in sharp dialogue but also share moments of boredom, ecstasy and detailed observation. They turn the genre’s conventions into an up-to-date escapist flick, which, by the way, was shot in just one week.
