REVIEW 672: VIJAY SUPERUM POURNAMIYUM

Release date:	Kerala: January 11, 2019 Delhi: February 8, 2019
Director:	Jis Joy
Cast: Language:	Aishwarya Lekshmi, Asif Ali, Shanthi Krishna, Renji Panicker, Siddique, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Anish Kuruvilla, Darshana Rajendran Malayalam

Two films with the same story yet worlds apart in quality – you might assume that the difference lies in the contrasting skills of their respective directors, but you would be assuming wrong. Malayalam cinema’s Vijay Superum Pournamiyum is a remake of the Telugu hit Pelli Choopulu. I have not seen the Telugu original, but last year it was my misfortune to watch its Hindi remake Mitron which, despite its alluringly realistic writing by Sharib Hashmi combined with Nitin Kakkar’s assured direction, could not overcome its one glaring handicap: the casting of Jackky Bhagnani as the leading man.

Like Mitron’s Kritika Kamra, Vijay Superum Pournamiyum’s female lead Aishwarya Lekshmi is fire and ice, sugar and spice, and everything you could hope for in a heroine. Playing the hero in the Malayalam film is Asif Ali who may not have the most earth-shattering screen presence on the planet, but by God is head and shoulders and stratospheric levels above Mr Bhagnani!

Truth be told, I can imagine Nivin Pauly or Fahadh Faasil might have elevated this film further than what it is. If stars of their stature were not available, and if Tovino Thomas was considered too much of a repetition after his team-up with Lekshmi in the spectacular Mayaanadhi, how about Neeraj Madhav who proved with 2017’s Paipin Chuvattile Pranayam that he hundred per cent is solo hero material?

Still, Ali’s natural Everyman-ness is a fit for this role and pairs well with Lekshmi’s dynamism in writer-director Jis Joy’s Vijay Superum Pournamiyum, the story of a young couple who meet by accident when he lands up at the wrong house while out to meet a prospective bride. Pournami’s father was disappointed at her birth, since he was hoping for a son. Now she is fiercely committed to making something of herself professionally, but is subjected to meetings with potential grooms she has no intention of marrying. Vijay, who needs to yell the words “Vijay super aanu” into a mirror to build self-belief (hence the title), loves cooking but does not have the guts or the drive to convince his conservative father that cheffing is a suitable profession for boys. So, he forces himself through engineering college, and is currently stuck in a job for which he has zero passion.

Unlike Pournami, Vijay is anxious to be married because he measures his worth only in terms of the dowry he could get that would help his family overcome their financial constraints.

Vijay Superum Pournamiyum establishes its unconventional sensibilities early on. The gender role reversal, for one – in the matter of marriage and career – is striking yet not rubbed in our faces with sermons. This is its defining characteristic.

Pournami is hardworking and level headed. Vijay is a no-hoper who is extremely irresponsible except with the one thing he loves. Though she rejects him as a groom, they bond over their frustrations and she ultimately asks him to partner her in a project that would meet her entrepreneurial goals and tap his talent in the kitchen.

The storyline is not burdened with any of the clichés recycled ad nauseam in so many so-called youth films, and neither of the two central characters is a stereotype. The impossibly bubbly young woman, the man whose stalkerish ways she falls for – none of that crap is to be found here. It is particularly a relief to see that ambition is not treated as a dirty word for a woman.

Vijay Superum Pournamiyum is a believable tale about what could happen if families accept their children as they are and allow them to be who they want to be. The film’s sense of humour, like its running commentary on life, is underplayed. It is narrated in such an undramatised style that much of it does not feel like cinema. Its most endearing quality is that it almost feels like two people called Pournami and Vijay transcribed lines they spoke in real life, and handed them to Lekshmi and Ali to say before the camera.

Except for an energetic song titled Pournami Superalle played out to a choreographed group dance, the soundtrack too merges entirely with the rest of the proceedings.

Jis Joy’s previous collaboration with Asif Ali, 2017’s Sunday Holiday, was similar in directorial tone but ended up being somewhat bland without the benefit of equally powerful writing. Vijay Superum Pournamiyum has more flesh and character. Ali is nice enough here. The leads are surrounded by beloved veterans Renji Panicker, Siddique and K.P.A.C. Lalitha who fill out their well-written parts well. It is sad though to see Shanthi Krishna delivering yet another generic performance as a generic mother – she has already done too many of these since her return to films in 2017 with Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela in which, coincidentally, Aishwarya Lekshmi made her debut.

In just her fourth screen venture, Ms Lekshmi proves that she has the acting chops and the presence to pull off a film in which she plays a/the central character. She is so good that she almost makes you want to ask the producer to rename this one Superlative Pournamiyum Vijay Superum.

Rating (out of five stars): ***1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	135 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/vijay-superum-pournamiyum-movie-review-aishwarya-lekshmis-dynamism-pairs-well-with-asif-alis-everyman-persona-6055881.html

Poster courtesy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijay_Superum_Pournamiyum

REVIEW 507: SUNDAY HOLIDAY

Release date:	July 14, 2017
Director:	Jis Joy
Cast: Language:	Asif Ali, Aparna Balamurali, Sreenivasan, Lal Jose, Siddique, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Shruti Ramachandran, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Sudheer Karamana, Alencier Ley Lopez, Asha Sarath Malayalam

Unni Mukundan (Sreenivasan) is an academic who wants to make a film. Or rather, he has written a script that he wants made into a film by the well-known director David Paul (Lal Jose). And so one day when their paths cross by chance, he grabs the opportunity to narrate his story to the stalwart.

Mukundan’s imagination transports Paul away from their meeting place to the town of Payyanur in Kerala’s Kannur district where Amal (Asaf Ali) is battling heartbreak. His girlfriend has ditched him to marry a man her family considers a better prospect, and Amal decides to get a fresh start in life. He relocates to work as a door-to-door salesperson elsewhere and encounters a motley bunch of new characters, among them a spunky fellow salesperson (played by Aparna Balamurali) who is more than she appears to be; an aspiring actor (Dharmajan Bolgatty) who sustains himself for now doing small-time ads; a writer of tacky dialogues and lyrics for the Malayalam dubbing of Telugu blockbusters (Siddique); and a man desperate to avenge his father’s betrayal at the hands of a treacherous business partner (Sudheer Karamana). 

Sunday Holiday – directed by Jis Joy who earlier made 2013’s Bicycle Thieves – is clearly designed as slice-of-life cinema. In keeping with that ambition, it gets its tone right in large parts. The storytelling style is natural and realistic until the director’s faith in his chosen genre falters glaringly when he needlessly inserts a nightclub song-and-dance into the proceedings, no doubt to give Asif Ali an opportunity to show off his dancing skills and possibly to appease viewers with a taste for formulae. The result of that jarring passage is a break in the flow of the narrative.   

The film’s multiple characters are projected as ordinary people, but each in their own way is not. The pain of a jilted lover is no less agonising to him just because he happens to be a non-entity to you and me. A professionally ambitious woman living alone in a conservative community is no less a heroine than the Manju Warriers and Nayantharas of the world in their on- and off-screen avatars. Sunday Holiday then is about the extraordinariness in everydayness.

Malayalam cinema has been delivering a string of on-point films of this nature, with last year’s Maheshinte Prathikaaram and the current rage, Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, being among the highlights of the lot. To have been a contender to their crown, Sunday Holiday needed stronger writing. While it has its basics in place, once the initial charm wears off, it is hard to ignore the fact that it lacks flesh and depth.

On the plus side, Mukundan’s narration is never stretched so long as to take away from the pull of Amal’s story – the (primary) film within this film – but on the downside, his ‘secret’, revealed in the end, is a needless addition to the plot and one that is almost silly.

Let us not mistake superficiality for simplicity, and loose ends for an open ending. Sunday Holiday does. Too often. A murderous attack on a significant character, for instance, is left casually unreported to the police. One of the characters gets away with a heist that is massive in his circumstances – while the manner in which that happens is not entirely impossible, what defies believability is that family members of the culprit, who are presented as decent folk, do not bat an eyelid when they discover his crime. And several characters fail to rise above a single defining characteristic.

The cast is packed with talented character artistes. Leading man Asif Ali is likeable as always but is yet to develop the charisma to carry the weight of an entire film on his shoulders. Aparna Balamurali, on the other hand, looks like she might, if only male-centric Mollywood would give her a chance. This youngster, who shone in supporting roles in Maheshinte Prathikaaram and Oru Muthassi Gadha last year, has the words “star material” written all over her, and deserves to be seen in films revolving around the character she plays.

As Anu, Balamurali lifts Sunday Holiday each time she appears on screen. If there was more of her in the film, it might even have been saved from its intermittent blandness.

That blandness arises largely from an overall lack of novelty. The traitorous female lover, the hapless male lover and all-male drinking sessions – familiar motifs from a vast majority of Malayalam films – play a substantial role here. They are a reminder of the extreme gender segregation in Kerala society and the anti-women prejudice that is its direct consequence – but these are unintentional insights (and the fact that they are unintentional on the part of Joy and so many other directors, including some seemingly progressive ones, just goes to show how deep-rooted these problems are).

That said, while Sunday Holiday offers little that is new, the good thing is that it is unpretentious. It is sometimes sweet, more often flat, at no point insufferable but never earth-shattering either. Having seen it once, I’d say it is watchable but thoroughly forgettable fare.

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	135 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sunday-holiday-movie-review-aparna-balamurali-sparkles-in-a-part-sweet-part-bland-film-3819005.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/sundayholidaymovie/