Netflix’s ‘Love Per Square Foot’ Is a Hindi Romance You Should Skip Your ‘House Hunters’ Marathon For

In Love Per Square Foot, the Hindi romantic comedy that Netflix released on Valentine’s Day as a rom-com gift to their global audience, Sanjay and Karina (Vicky Kaushal and Angira Dhar) engage in the most relatable of relationship quandaries: they seek out the perfect apartment. The setup seems sitcommy — an opportunity for couples housing brings Sanjay and Karina together, and from that desire to find a great place in Mumbai, springs an adorable and relatable romance. Or as relatable as it can be for two wildly attractive people living in the big city.

It’s a story that takes place halfway around the world but is as relatable to American audiences as any storyline on Master of None or Friends or High Maintenance or any of the shows that take place in big cities. Apartment-finding is an utter nightmare, and for two people as attractive as Sanjay and Karina are, it’s far easier to attract the opposite sex than it is to find a halfway decent apartment for a good price.

There’s some pleasant family comedy in Love Per Square Foot, some comedy-of-manners stuff updated to modern times, and and I can’t think of too many movies in 2018 that could put together a production number based on “The Chicken Dance.” But truly the best thing about this romantic comedy is the wish fulfillment aspect of finding the perfect companion and the perfect place to live in the span of the same two-hour movie. Because as a single person living in New York City, don’t think that I haven’t considered pitching someone on just getting married and finding that more-affordable one-bedroom now and dealing with whether or not we’ll ever fall in love way down the road.

Is that insane? Yes. Are most romantic comedies also insane about one thing or another? YES! This is basically the plot of the Simon Pegg TV series Spaced, but echoes of this are all across the genre. Meet cutes, couples who get together because one of them was trying to win a bet, women who fall in love with men in comas and lie to their families, men who pine about their prom dates whom they haven’t seen since the fateful day they got their wiener caught in their zipper … the American studio system has come up with a LOT of ways to get couples together. Watching Sanjay and Karina balance their hopes for a real and original romance and the practicality of finding a really good flat in Mumbai might be the most honest piece of romantic comedy in years.

Stream Love Per Square Foot on Netflix