I Hate Valentine's Day!: Sita Sings the Blues

The director Nina Paley made this film as a sort of coping mechanism/response for her failed relationship. She compares it to that of the folktale of the Ramayan, whose wife Sita was abandoned by him and had to prove her purity time and again.

It's an animated film, and the story begins in modern day America, where a man gets an offer of a job in India, segueing to the folktale. Sita's blue-skinned husband Rama (aka Vishnu), instead of becoming king, is banished to the forest. He goes to fight off creatures that put her life in danger, and Sita waits patiently. After she becomes pregnant (supposedly while he is away), he leaves her. Some Indian voices discuss the folk tale, as if they are recalling all the versions they were told as children.

Every now again Sita will break out in a bluesy jazz song that reflects her sadness and predicament, while characters play out the lyrics of the song in a sort of animated music video. Different styles of animation portray Sita and Rama, some less polished and more obviously handdrawn, others that are more CGI and repetitive, some that are in papercuts.


The film returns back the the modern day story where the working man Dave tells Nina (voice acted by Paley herself) that his job is taking longer than expected and he is staying in India longer, which compares (weakly) to Sita's faithfully waiting for Rama while he is involved in dangerous situations. In a typical romcom setup, Nina goes off to a foreign country to get her man. Leap Year anyone? Also French Kiss, and Only You and I'm sure many others where women feel unfulfilled unless Mr. Right is in their lives. But where those films had the heroine finding out there was a different man she loved, here Sita and Nina just face a broken heart. Eventually Dave dumps Nina.

I think the film should have just stuck with the Indian aspects, and not the American, even though that was part of the filmmaker's process of closure to her relationship. The American parts have lesser quality acting and animation, especially since the filmmaker herself, who is not an actress, plays a part. Juxtaposing it to the more colorful visuals and narrative of the Indian story really point out how weak and uninteresting it is, no matter how personal it is to Paley. If you really examine the two women's stories, neither of them is not a very pro-feminist view.

I would have liked less broad acting in the American section (when she cries, it is buckets of tears, and when her heart is broken, it breaks in pieces, nothing realistic about that) and more emotive facial expressions in the Indian parts. We are expected to side with the Nina character but as she is portrayed, she seems like a whiny, weepy "I need a man otherwise I am nothing" sort of woman. All of Sita's songs are in a similar vein, pining, "why don't you need me," etc. If your man doesn't want you, then find another one or learn to like yourself more!

Since I saw this on DVD, the subtitles were also a couple beats behind the dialogue, and curiously it has an intermission break but doesn't need one, it's only 85 minutes long. The visuals and music (both the blues and Indian songs) are the film's strong points. The American narrative is the weakest, it doesn't show much history to Dave and Nina, and why he dumps her (whereas Sita has more reasons to be in pain) and as a result I wasn't interested in Nina's story. The Sita story is more engaging, but it too has the flashiness of music videos without real emotion in the characters. The film is just an extended torch song.