REVIEW 417: PRETHAM

Release date:	August 12, 2016
Director:	Ranjith Sankar
Cast: Language:	Jayasurya, Govind Padmasoorya, Sharafudheen, Aju Varghese, Pearl Maaney Malayalam

In a scene from Pretham, a mentalist called John Don Bosco guesses a man’s cellphone password simply by holding his hand. The cynical chap’s friend says excitedly: “Please do something similar with me.” Bosco replies without batting an eyelid: “What should I do? Rape you?” To which the said friend responds: “But I’m not a woman, no?” Sick!

Writer-director Ranjith Sankar positions this episode as light-hearted banter. Many scenes later, we witness Bosco fighting a moving battle on behalf of a woman targeted by voyeurism. Yes, the same Bosco who casually makes rape quips apparently feels strongly about the invasion of a woman’s privacy.

Does he have a split personality? No, Pretham does.

This is what happens when someone makes a “look at me, see how socially committed I am” kind of film without any genuine commitment.

Pretham is a supernatural thriller packaged in comedy. It is set in a gorgeous seaside resort in Kerala owned by three young men who have been friends since college. Shibu (played by Govind Padmasoorya) is a good-looking guy who takes Zumba classes at the resort and is having a Skype affair with his now-married ex-girlfriend. Denny Kokan (Aju Varghese) is a lecherous creep who leers at Shibu’s female Zumba students and tries to have a fling with one of them, a girl called Suhanissa played by the strikingly attractive Pearl Maaney. Priya Lal (Sharafudheen) is the simpleton of the group, smitten by Suhanissa.

Strange things start happening at the resort one day when Denny tries to shoot Suhanissa with his cellphone.

Is the place haunted? Or is a woman one of them misbehaved with trying to spook them? The answer comes in a surprising second half that is completely – and deliberately – at odds with the carefree tone of the first.

Pretham operates at two levels. The comedic elements actually work for the most part. The film scores with its delicious irreverence towards religion represented by the character Yesu (Dharmajan Bolgatty) who asks uncomfortable questions to a Christian priest and others.

The world needs more people who can let their hair down about faith, gods and goddesses. Pretham’s intelligent courage in that area is what makes its intermittently icky, if not thoroughly disgusting, attitude towards women so disappointing. Even before that horrendous rape remark, we are supposed to be entertained by Denny’s plan to secretly mix an aphrodisiac in Suhanissa’s drink. What next? Must we also laugh at boys slipping a roofie to a date?

The rape joke is especially obnoxious because it comes from Bosco, a man who is positioned as someone to be taken seriously within the universe of the film. Like him, Pretham’s attitude to women is confused and confusing. On the one hand it displays sensitivity in the denouement, on the other hand it treats Suhanissa in particular very trivially as a creature to be toyed with. Bosco, for instance, does not ask her to have a coffee with him, he ogles her to her face and asks if she will have “coffee, very hot coffee” (note the emphasis please). I almost expected him to lick his lips as he stared at her in that scene. Yuck!

Suhanissa is positioned as the kind of girl who would be described by conservative north Indians as “uss type ki ladki (that kind of girl)” and across most parts of India as the kind of girl you take to bed but not home to your mother. Read: an easy lay because, you know, her hair is permed, she is Westernised, she does Zumba, holds hands with men, goes into rooms alone with them, embraces men she is fond of without considering it a big deal and is sexually assertive when she meets a guy she likes… hawww, chhee, must definitely be “that type”, no?

All four men are very different in the film’s thriller strand, more mature, sobre and decent. These strangely inconsistent stances dilute the apparent intent of the film: to amuse, to scare and to make a point.

The change in tenor from comedy to whodunit as the story progresses is well handled and the big reveal in the end is unexpected. It succeeds despite the red herrings thrown in our direction. One of them involving a woman at the resort is rather intelligently dealt out, while others – suspended lamps moving in the dark, a resort employee appearing to be possessed – are stupid since no explanation is provided for them in the end.

Pretham makes multiple references to earlier Malayalam films in the horror genre, though the most telling mention of the lot is the 1978 classic Lisa. Keep in mind though that although this film has a supernatural element it is not, strictly speaking, a horror flick – it is at no point meant to be as frightening as it is meant to be suspenseful.

Pretham’s casting is spot on. Jayasurya brings gravitas to his role as Bosco and is a perfect foil to the three goofy friends at the centre of the drama. Padmasoorya, Varghese and Sharafudheen are natural actors. They share an easy chemistry and come across as real-life friends rather than actors playing roles.

The film is a mixed bag on the technical front. Most spaces in Pretham are inexplicably deserted. I recall spotting guests at the resort just once, and a college complex seems devoid of humans when Bosco first visits it. In another tech department though, Pretham comes up trumps: the film’s waterfront setting is stunning, and cinematographer Jithu Damodar exploits it to the hilt without appearing obsessive. The opening shot of the sea made me long for my next visit to God’s Own Country.

Pretham is a partly effective paranormal thriller-cum-comedy, diluted by its mixed-up attitude to women and an ugly rape quip.

Footnote on the subtitles: At one point one of the lead trio addresses an elderly neighbour sarcastically as “Ammachi”. This is a respectful Malayalam form of address for an older woman that, in this instance, is being used like some people might mockingly use “Aunty”. That’s all very well, but the subtitling team translated “Ammachi” to “you old hag”. Errr, even when Ammachi and Aunty are used as ageist taunts, neither word is ever as crude as “hag”.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	127 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/pretham-review-jayasurya-stars-in-an-inconsistent-comedy-thriller-with-an-ugly-rape-quip-2954086.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretham

REVIEW 396: PHOBIA

Release date:	May 27, 2016
Director:	Pavan Kirpalani
Cast: Language:	Radhika Apte, Satyadeep Mishra, Ankur Vikal, Yashaswini Dayama Hindi

Bollywood has a lousy track record with horror films in the past couple of decades. Most makers of spookfests and mind benders in Hindi have, for what seems like the recent forever, tried to manipulate audiences with screeching sounds, sudden camera movements and other clichés.

Phobia has no time for such low-brow nonsense. Director Pavan Kirpalani’s third film is a heart-stoppingly frightening thriller that refuses to take the viewer for granted. His first, Ragini MMS in 2011, was flawed but proved that he was cut out for the genre. Phobia is simply brilliant in the way it rolls up to the multiple massive surprises in the end. This is seriously scary, seriously intriguing stuff that, as it happens, features a career-defining performance by Radhika Apte.

The film begins with wickedly chosen clues. Franz Kafka’s words, “A cage went in search of a bird”, appear on screen before the camera closes in on a painting. Next we meet artist Mehek Deo (Radhika Apte), surrounded by what seem like friends and admirers at her exhibition while she narrates a story about a cat and a weird old man and gently ribs a chap called Shaan (Satyadeep Mishra). Everything in that apparently innocuous scene is crucial to what follows.

Soon after, Mehek is sexually assaulted and develops agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder that leads her to fear leaving her home. Shaan, her some-time lover and full-time friend, takes her away from the flat she occupied with her sister with whom she shares a tense relationship, to a friend’s apartment since he is sure solitude will cure her. He does not, however, anticipate the creepy neighbour (Ankur Vikal) and the diary of an ex-tenant who went missing, which start preying on Mehek’s mind. What follows is a hair-raising parade of visions, violence and then gore.

Satyen Chaudhry’s design of the rented house is crucial to the panic building up in Mehek’s mind and the anticipation mounting in ours. The air of decaying prosperity, the walls bearing paintings with darkened human figures that could easily be mistaken for mirrors in which we are possibly seeing a reflection of someone watching Mehek from behind – it is all very spooky.

Jayakrishna Gummadi’s camera occasionally changes vantage points so that we sometimes watch the proceedings as outsiders and sometimes right beside or behind Mehek, hoping to see what she sees. His work, Vivek Sachidanand’s sound design and Karan Gour’s background score never once make us conscious of how they are working to play around with our heads.

Fully backing the talent backing him, the director builds up a sense of foreboding from the very first shot. He occasionally relieves the tension with a genre cliché – a bathtub, a musical timepiece, a peephole, a character opting to enter an eerie place though we as viewers are smart enough to know it probably houses a ghost – possibly to convince us that since this is familiar ground, we are well prepared for what comes next. In one scene, a knife is conveniently left in the vicinity of a patient with a grave psychological ailment. As it turns out, a cliché is not a cliché and a loophole is not a lazy loophole if what you saw is not what you think you saw.

There are brief passages of humour in Shaan and Mehek’s fights and when her paranoid actions border on the farcical. A formulaic filmmaker trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator might have used such scenes to mock Mehek and mental maladies. Not Kirpalani. These interludes serve to lull our senses before – boom! – another plot twist smacks us in the nerves.

Mehek is popular, attractive and knows her mind. Watching her develop a phobia is akin to the shock you get when you discover that someone like Robin Williams suffered from severe depression. “How could a funny man be depressed?” here becomes “how could a feisty woman be afraid?” Medical professionals could explain whether the film is accurate in its depiction of agoraphobia, but this is for sure: by painting Mehek as a lively creature in that brief introduction, Kirpalani overturns the stereotypes about mental illness that so many of us harbour. Bravo!

This is truly intelligent writing all around: the story is by Kirpalani himself, he co-wrote the screenplay with Arun Sukumar, and the naturally flowing dialogues are by Pooja Ladha Surti who is also responsible for the film’s crisp, clever editing.

At the heart of it all is the wonderful Radhika Apte who is pitch perfect as Mehek. Apte has already built an impressive filmography in character roles across Indian film industries in the past decade. Her experience shows in Phobia in which she dominates the story and the camera rests on her almost throughout, without the strain showing for even a second.

She is ably supported by believable performances from the entire supporting cast. Yashaswini Dayama playing her slightly kookie teenaged neighbour is a find.

Though the film’s primary goal is to scare the bejeezus out of us, it is also filled with acute social insights. For instance, Mehek’s fear of the outside results from a sexual assault, yet in her flat she is stuck with the devil within. In that sense, Phobia is a metaphor for the omnipresence of sexual predators in a world where women are told to cover up, not step out late, not step out alone, not step into crowds, all to protect themselves, but judgmental misogynists have no answer for what is to be done about sexual marauders within homes, families, offices and among acquaintances.

Mehek’s actions in her new home are an effort to help a woman she never knew. Her innate goodness, the risks a chirpy neighbour (Yashaswini Dayama) takes for her, the lengths to which Shaan goes for her indicate the film’s non-black-&-white view of the world. When we first see Mehek, it is evident she has a wide social circle. When it comes to the crunch though, the only one by her side is Shaan. Even her seemingly loving sister turns on her with alarming ferocity when she becomes an inconvenience. Then Mehek steps up for a stranger, then a stranger steps up for her. The crowd at the party does not turn up for Mehek, but decency is clearly not dead.

Ghost flick, psychological thriller, social commentary or all the above – in the end, Phobia is what you want it to be for yourself. It is also, without question, a superbly entertaining film.

Rating (out of five): ****

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	112 minutes

Poster courtesy: Raindrop Media