Leave and Come Back

Old tensions resurface during a huge family wedding to threaten a new romance in Lakshmi’s chaotic debut rom-com. Simran Gopal has seen her aunt Veena Iyer, who took her in after her parents died, arrange a deeply unsuccessful marriage for her cousin Kavitha and refuses to be next. So she flees New Jersey for Toronto to follow her own path. Seven years later, Simran returns for the wedding of another cousin, Geeta, in a tentative attempt to reconnect with her family. Potentially derailing this reconciliation is the fact that she’s just started dating Canadian translator Leo Bridgers, who is not at all the “nice Tamil boy with a good job who lives close by” that Veena envisions for her. Simran and her cousins cook up a scheme to introduce Leo as a friend of the groom, hoping he’ll impress the family enough to win them over. They also stage a fake meet-cute for him and Simran, hoping to make it look like they are falling in love for the first time. Lakshmi sets up a lot of meaty character conflicts and disparate desires among her large cast, but doesn’t deliver satisfying payoffs in an ending that relies on flimsy and unconvincing compromises all around. Simran and Leo’s relationship is similarly sidelined by endless wedding hijinks. It’s a fun premise but a rocky follow-through. (June)