REVIEW 770: VARANE AVASHYAMUNDU

Release date:	Kerala: February 7, 2020 Delhi: February 14, 2020
Director:	Anoop Sathyan
Cast: Language:	Shobana, Dulquer Salmaan, Suresh Gopi, Kalyani Priyadarshan, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Urvashi, Johnny Antony Malayalam with Tamil

Gawd, she is gorgeous!

In a decade that has been crying out for more films with Shobana, debutant director Anoop Sathyan – son of the legendary Sathyan Anthikad – has pulled off a coup. First, he convinced the stunning actor-dancer to star in Varane Avashyamundu (Groom Wanted). Then, in an era where major male stars in their 50s and 60s insist on playing comparative youngsters romancing women played by female actors of their children’s generation, he cast veteran stalwart Suresh Gopi in the role of her beau. As if that were not impressive enough, Anoop has Dulquer Salmaan – one of contemporary Mollywood’s most powerful young stars, debuting as a producer here – happily hanging out in the background playing one of several charming characters in this ensemble film, instead of using his clout to increase his screen time.

A hat tip to Dulquer for willingly subordinating himself to the requirements of the script. A hat tip and a salaam to Anoop for envisioning a primary role for an older woman star in an industry that marginalises women of all ages, more so those past 30/35.

Varane Avashyamundu is set in an apartment complex in Chennai, home to a disparate group of people. Shobana plays Neena, a French teacher and single mother whose daughter Nikitha (Kalyani Priyadarshan) is obsessed with arranging a marriage for herself. Dulquer plays a chap nicknamed Fraud, sharing a home with his much younger brother and a lady he calls Akashavani (K.P.A.C. Lalitha). This sociable gang are a sharp contrast to their diffident, hot-tempered, lonely neighbour, the retired Major Unnikrishnan (Suresh Gopi).

From the moment we are introduced to these characters, it is not hard to guess where they will end up. Despite that predictability and the incompleteness of a couple of the relationship graphs, the overall pleasantness of the narrative, the progressiveness that goes beyond just the casting and the collective charisma of the actors combine to elevate the film to another level altogether.

So yes, I would certainly have liked to better understand Nikitha’s long-standing resentment towards her loving mother. It would have been nice to better explore Fraud’s equation with his little sibling. And names like Fraud and Akashavani sound more than a bit pretentious. But in other areas, Anoop’s script proves unexpectedly satisfying.

For one, the romance between Neena and the Major develops smoothly without caricaturing either of the individuals involved or mocking their age. Second, the warmth between Nikitha and the parent of one of the potential grooms she finds online is heartwarming. Varane Avashyamundu has an easy sense of humour, and like his father, Anoop has an easy storytelling style. He also reveals himself to be a thinking writer when he features older people who turn out to be more forward thinking than their children, contrary to prevalent ageist assumptions that equate liberalism with youth. And most important, in an industry that has for decades now displayed a casual approach to domestic abuse, it is a relief to see a Malayalam film in which a husband’s violence towards his wife is considered condemnable.

The cast is uniformly likeable and the statuesque Shobana’s presence made me yearn for more of her in future (though I wish we were listening to her voice rather than Bhagyalakshmi dubbing for her here). Anoop elicits a relatively controlled performance from Gopi, during which just once does he allow the actor’s trademark mannered style to surface in a scene in which the Major asks a troublemaker menacingly, “Ormayundo ee mukham?” (Do you remember this face). That’s another thing – the film’s referencing of popular Malayalam cinema needed to be better written, and it could have done without that running joke about how Neena resembles Shobana.

But she is hotness and dignity personified, her co-stars are all easy on the eye and the storyline is sweet even if not extraordinary, making Varane Avashyamundu a happy overall experience.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.75

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	145 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/varane-avashyamundu-movie-review-shobana-dulquer-a-sedate-suresh-gopi-and-a-sweet-story-whats-not-to-like-8051061.html

Posters courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/DQSalmaan/

REVIEW 729: ITTYMAANI – MADE IN CHINA

Release date:	September 6, 2019
Director:	Jibi-Joju
Cast: Language:	Mohanlal, Radikaa Sarathkumar, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Aju Varghese, Dharmajan Bolgatty, Honey Rose, Siddique Malayalam

I don’t suppose there is any point in pointing out to directors Jibi and Joju that packing their film with ugly ageist remarks aimed at a woman is at odds with their purported goal of batting for the elderly. Well, never mind then.

The very literally titled Ittymaani: Made In China is about a Kerala-based man called Ittymaani (Mohanlal) who was born – c’mon take a guess ... wait for it ... wait for it – in China. That tenuous connection to our superpower neighbour gives the hero and his mother (K.P.A.C. Lalitha) an excuse to occasionally chat in what I assume is Mandarin to fool their community. It also serves as a spark for a bunch of predictable jokes about Chinese goods.

In the same town lives the wealthy Plaamoottil Annamma (Radikaa Sarathkumar) whose wicked wicked children neglect her. This is the sort of film that does not have time for shades of grey in its characters. And so, the aged are consigned to across-the-board sainthood and painted as unblemished innocents deserving of nothing but our adoration. Annamma’s offspring and spouses, meanwhile, are uniformly depicted as irredeemable evil louts with not a grain of decency in them.

The hero, for his part, has a golden heart. Some of the early jokes in Ittymaani: Made in China come from his penchant for extracting a commission from anyone with whom he has a financial transaction including – shamelessly – the doctors at a hospital where he admits his beloved mother in an emergency. But fear not, people, it is not what you are thinking. By the end of the film you will learn that he is, in fact, Saint Ittymaani.

Many are the lectures delivered about the duties of the youth towards their parents. Simultaneously, the town behaves as if there is nothing more repulsive and shocking than the prospect of an elderly widowed mother marrying, especially if her groom is a younger man. The disgust at the possibility of a senior woman’s kalyanam comes not just from the jerks in the community but also from those who are portrayed as kind and open-minded. The same folk have no qualms about Ittymaani going for a pennu kaanal (meaning, to see a potential bride) at the home of a girl called Jessy Pothen who, comparatively speaking, has the appearance of a child.

The hypocrisy is not confined to the characters in the film. The filmmakers themselves mirror the values of the regressive people they have created. Consider this. Cast in the role of the supposedly old Annamma is Radikaa Sarathkumar who is just 56. While the supposedly young Ittymaani is played by Mohanlal who is 59. And the reason why Jessy Pothen looks like she could be Ittymaani’s daughter is because the actor playing her, Honey Rose, is in reality young enough to be Mohanlal’s kid. 

There is a significant twist right before the interval that could have led Ittymaani: Made in China down a path of brilliance, novelty and progressiveness. However it comes to nought in the face of the story’s ageist, sexist, highly misogynistic true colours.

There are so many double standards in this self-righteous film, so many examples of narrow-mindedness, that a comprehensive listing is not possible. For one, a satellite character compares Annamma to a 1965 model Ambassador, but that is a relatively mild potshot in a narrative that has double entendre flying fast and thick in conversations and gestures. And oh yes, like a string of Mollywood ventures since the formation of the vanitha mathil (women’s wall) in Kerala early this year, this one too features a random flippant remark dissing the MeToo movement.

Jessy Pothen barely utters a couple of sentences throughout Ittymaani: Made In China but she does fulfill the only purpose for which she is inserted into the plot – she looks sexy, she looks youthful and she goes moony over Ittymaani. This, as Mollywood audiences well know, is an essential requirement of most Lalettan films these days, almost as if the megastar is on a mission to prove that he is attractive to much younger and good-looking women. The Annammas of this universe may be scorned and expected to retire into the Vanaprasthashram of their lives and ultimately embrace Sanyas, but heaven forbid that anyone should eye Mohanlal from the very lens through which he and his filmmakers view women of his generation.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	158 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ittymaani-made-in-china-movie-review-mohanlal-starrer-steeped-in-ageism-ironically-bats-for-the-elderly-7305751.html

Visuals courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/IttymaaniMadeInChina/

REVIEW 719: KALKI

Release date:	Kerala: August 8, 2019 Delhi: August 9, 2019
Director:	Praveen Prabharam
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Samyuktha Menon, Saiju Kurup, Hareesh Uthaman, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Shivajith Padmanabhan Malayalam

As if it isn’t heartbreaking enough that Nivin Pauly did that obnoxious film Mikhael this year, Tovino Thomas goes and does this one.

To be fair, Mikhael’s loudness is child’s play in comparison with Kalki’s repugnant celebration of extreme violence. This is a film that uses crushed bones, twisted joints and sliced off body parts as a tool for both humour and moralising, in what must rank as one of the most disgusting cinematic odes to bloodshed ever seen.

Imagine what Kalki must be if one of the dominant motifs in its sound design is the gurgling and bubbling of blood just as it begins to pour out of bodies ripped apart by various characters including the ‘hero’.

Imagine this moment, designed as comedy, when a policeman with a sobre demeanour carries a blood-spattered chainsaw to this ‘hero’, explains that one of the villain’s legs has now been cut off and asks permission to cut off the second leg too since they are paying rent for the tool anyway. The boss gives his assent.

If that ‘hero’ had been played by Mammootty or Mohanlal, perhaps one could live with it. After all, the two M’s have allowed their careers to rest largely on ugly machismo and physical invincibility in the past couple of decades. The disappointment here arises from the fact that the protagonist is young Tovino Thomas whose stardom has been built primarily with thoughtful films like Godha, Mayaanadhi, Virus and Luca.

In a town called Nanchenkotta in Kalki, an upright policeman called Vyshakhan commits suicide, unable to take the humiliation meted out by the criminal overlord Amarnath and his flunkeys who rule the region. Amarnath has ties to the senior politician Vijayanandhan whose extremist party DYP has driven out the Tamils in the area. With elections approaching and alliances being sewed up, all lines are crossed until a new S.I. takes Vyshakhan’s seat. Played by Thomas, this policeman remains unnamed till the end, identified simply as K on his badge and nameplate and as Kalki by the soundtrack.

You get an idea of where this film is headed in his introductory scene when he sets a hooligan on fire while a signature song is screeched out in the background. This is the sort of raucous number packed with silly English lines that a certain kind of Malayalam filmmaker seems to think is a signifier of super coolth.

Like Mikhael’s laughable referencing of Christian mythology, Kalki too takes a shot at intellectualism. So of course the title comes from the name of the tenth and final avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu: the swordsman Kalki who is expected to descend on the world to end Kalyug, a dismal, destructive phase of human existence. There is potential for such great storytelling with a modern-day interpretation of Kalki, but writer-director Praveen Prabharam (who has co-written this film with Sujin Sujathan) is not one for nuance and deep thought. And so his Kalki is so bloody and lawless that the only distinction between Amarnath’s gang and him is that he stands with a marginalised people, the laudable ends being offered as justification for his condemnable means. If cinema reflects reality, then Kalki is a reflection of a real-life Kalyug that upholds a 56-inch male chest as a virtue.

In one scene, K virtually lists as a plus point in his favour the fact that he is in the home of one of his enemies but has not raped the women of the family. This is Prabharam’s version of Ishq’s horrifying second half.

As is the case with male actors in all such Malayalam films, Tovino Thomas deadpans and poses around throughout Kalki. So do all the men playing the antagonists. The only actor who gets something out of this script is Saiju Kurup in the role of an idealist.

The lovely Samyuktha Menon has not much to do here. She appears to have been cast in the role of K’s bete noir’s daughter only because her pairing with Thomas in Theevandi drew acclaim. From the little that we see of her Dr Sangeetha, she seems like a feisty creature, but we get to see so little. The women of this film are mere sidelights in a man’s world.

Everyone in Kalki is relegated to the background as K / Thomas strides across the screen framed in stereotypical low-angle shots, playing with his Ray-Bans, the earth stopping to listen to the crunching sound of his slippers touching the ground, all while ear-splitting music overwhelms the narrative.

Even K is not the central figure of this film though. The central figure is DoP Gautham Sankar who captures in excruciating detail Amarnath stabbing his first victim and ripping his torso by dragging the dagger all the way down to the stomach in an action that we soon discover is his MO, a meat cleaver severing a man’s nose, a head being smashed against a metal pillar, and more.

You too, Tovino Thomas?

Rating (out of five stars): 1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	141 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/kalki-movie-review-tovino-thomass-repugnant-take-on-the-violent-larger-than-life-cliched-hero-7141671.html

Visuals courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/kalkithemovie/