Release date:
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March 6, 2015
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Director:
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Manu Warrier
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Cast:
Language:
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Arjun Mathur,
Sugandha Garg, Mohan Kapur
Hindi and English
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Coffee Bloom is a small, charming even if inconsistent film
about a young man letting his life slip away in bitterness over an incident in
his youth. Director Manu Warrier tells his tale armed with three
talented actors and one of the most gorgeous settings in India: the coffee plantations
of Coorg in Karnataka.
The story revolves
around Dev Anand Cariappa (Arjun Mathur) who spends his time listening to
clichéd recorded sermons about the meaning of life, as he wallows in the
lingering misery of an old romance gone terribly wrong. Dev claims to be a sanyasi, but has to deal with the
surfacing of his worldly desires when a tragedy takes him back to his old family
estate – which now has a new owner – in Coorg. There he meets his former
girlfriend Anika (Sugandha Garg) and her husband. As he works at his job on a
local estate, he must confront his feelings for her and his own desperate need
for closure over the incident that tore them apart.
The circumstances
surrounding their broken relationship are told in instalments through a series
of flashbacks. The incremental revelations form an interesting element in Coffee Bloom. Equally attractive are the
three central performers – Mathur, Garg and Mohan Kapur playing Srinivas
Panicker, the boss of the plantation on which Dev takes up temporary work.
The ever-reliable Mathur
– earlier seen in Luck By Chance, I Am, My Name Is Khan and several author-backed roles in high-profile ads
– is convincing as always as a flaky, immature fellow borrowing pretentious
phrases for everyday conversations from those sermons he listens to; an emotionally
ravaged young man masking his silent screams for revenge with a veneer of renunciation.
He comes across as a person who probably pictured himself playing the part of a
tortured soul/tragedy king and then did such a good job of it that he became
the man he was playing, a man who just cannot let go of the past.
Garg is a familiar face
as the excellent actress who played Imran Khan/Jai Singh Rathore’s close friend
in Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. Not only is
she talented, she’s also exceedingly good-looking. It’s a mystery why we don’t
see her more often in mainstream Hindi films. Kapur turns in an interesting
performance as the ebullient, slightly dense, but well-meaning Srinivas who does
not know the ‘c’ of coffee or the ‘oo’ of oogaana
(cultivation), as Dev puts it angrily, but sees running a coffee estate as his
dream. He is a bit flighty but so good-natured and good-hearted that it’s hard
to be put off by him.
In the midst of their believable
characterisations and acting comes Ishwari Bose-Bhattacharya’s turn as Shonda,
who is… well, I could not entirely make out what she does, but she is the
live-in partner of someone we never meet and a woman who Dev befriends. This
inexplicable, voluptuous woman speaks an awkwardly written blend of Bengali-accented
Hindi and English, which is incongruous considering that the director is clearly
asking for a suspension of disbelief from us by: (a) not asking Mathur to ‘do
an accent’ (you know what I mean) and (b) by showing a Coorgi boy and his
mother naturally conversing with each other in Hindi. Since we have been
convinced to accept both the above, trying to introduce authenticity to
Shonda’s language and style of speaking makes the film uneven. Why could she not
have spoken plain Hindi?
That apart, the
narrative turns slightly disjointed during an incident involving a gun towards
the end of the film. Still, Mathur and Garg manage to pull Coffee Bloom over that bump with their natural ease before the
camera.
A desire for revenge consumes us much more than
it harms our intended targets – that’s what the film seems to be gently telling
us; and that even if you never discover what caused a cataclysmic event in your
life, the best thing you could do for yourself is to move on.
For the most part then, this is an engaging
film. What is disappointing though is that Director of Photography Yogesh P. Jani
fails to fully exploit the naturally rich location at his disposal. This is not
to say that his pictures aren’t pretty. They are. Very pretty indeed. But then even
if you and I were to take random shots of sundry spots in Coorg, we might come
away with exquisite visuals – that’s
how lovely the place is. Point is, with a professional behind the camera, I
can’t remember any outdoor shot in Coffee
Bloom so unique in its composition that it surprised me, which is odd
considering that the Internet tells me Jani is the same man who delivered to us
the photographic detailing of Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns (2013). With Coffee
Bloom, was he constrained by a limited budget or was he personally less
invested in this project? It’s impossible to guess the reason. It is a measure
of the absolute splendour of this region that it looks stunning in the film despite
the limited imagination employed in the cinematography.
Be that as it may, I found Coffee Bloom a well-acted and unexpectedly satisfying film. Be
warned: it is paced in a fashion that might be considered too slow and too languid
by some. To me though it felt relaxed, reflective, unusual and offbeat.
Rating (out of five): **3/4
CBFC Rating (India):
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U/A
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Running time:
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95 minutes
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