What starts like a loveable lockdown romance ends up being a numbing corona tale
The theme is lockdown and there are five films about it, the number of mentions of lockdown and corona would be a nice exercise to do while watching the short films because almost every film has a mention of it, a number of times. As if we haven’t heard the news and read the newspapers enough, the terms are annoying to the core. And given the limitations, all filmmakers try really hard to do something worthwhile where some end up successful and some end up desperate but everyone end up doing literal tales with very little cinematic value.
Let’s look at each of the films, one by one.
Ilamai Idho Idho
The first film is generally a make or break film when it comes to an anthology. So, it has to be carefully selected so that it sets the mood right plus the other films has to be better than the first one, otherwise audience will easily lose interest. ‘Ilamai Idho Idho’ works for its curiosity and terrific cast. Even though Kalidas and Kalyani are cute as a young couple, it’s the seasoned campaigners Jayaram and Urvashi who steal the show. At first when they transformed to young self, I was disappointed because it felt like an insult to old age, to employ young people to act them out but the mix and match of cast worked well as a whole.
Coming from a lady director, the eye for details is amazing, the spoon in the bowl and wet towel on bed are like every household’s melodrama, which one a woman can note. May be for an upper middle-class person with maids to support for every need, this might look cute. But for an average individual, they’d know how annoying these things can get. After the drama, the film ends on a happy note too. Well begun is half done.
Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum
The titles, voice over, a delayed heroine entry, English speaking people. You know you’re in for a GVM retreat. Thankfully its not a love story but a story between a grandad and his granddaughter which is done in the same romantic way as how Jessie meets Karthik. Needless to say, M. S. Bhaskar is excellent, for a change, as an educated urban scientist and Ritu Varma as an IT employee, who from a recent hangover of ‘Oru Manam’ looks all the more fabulous as a GVM heroine.
Of all the shorts, this one feels the least desperate, even though there are a lot of mentions of mask and corona. There is an overtly dramatic scene between them both, where the subject is excellent but dialogues were written very poorly, a trademark GVM mistake. Thanks to the cast, they make the scene work. I loved the idea of how a man feels for her daughter’s loss of passion, it’s a great subject which GVM has touched upon but it doesn’t carry on with the same flow. Like any other GVM film, more than the film, we end up loving the heroine and her costumes.
Coffee, Anyone?
The film’s downfall starts from here. A tale of sisters, something which should have had a Jane Austen flair, falls flat because of over enthusiasm of real-life sisters, Anu Hassan and Suhasini Maniratnam, through acting and directing, respectively. Obviously Suhasini has directed because whoever came up with the idea, discussed with their peers and decided to do a lockdown film, it’s not that they hunted for talents. So, this is a pretty bleak subject. An ailing mother whom we first think has corona but thankfully not, her three daughters, one of whom had born late and a father who takes care of wife.
The film is about hope but its as hopeless as it could get, the subject is like how a teenager would write short story, there is absolutely no surprise. There is no logic but only magic but the magic doesn’t work because its like seeing the age-old act for the umpteenth time. If the GVM movie was literal in narrative, this film is literal right from the title. The climax with the granny holding a cup of filter kaapi lokes like a more irritating version of Ashwagandha, Athi Madhuram mixed 3 roses tea ad.
Reunion
Seriously, what was even tried here. It has Andrea who’s hot as hell and wears great gym wears at home and even sings an awesome English song but that’s that. Of all, this looked like the most pointless film. Like a film of an old man who so wanted to prove that he is young. It was a reunion of sorts where a singer meets doctor who has crush on her. There are drugs, biryani and adidas thrown in. Poor Gurucharan C, apart from singing that Ooh la la la song, there isn’t one scene he looked comfortable. Especially going near Andrea, he had a constant fear like a high school student trying to talk to a pretty girl. The climax where he says that the poem is for her, is a point which the audience would have decoded even before the script was written.
Miracle
This would have been a film which most people had eagerly waited for. The film starts with trademark Karthik Subbaraj shots, music and pun. Wonder how Bobby Simha acts so well when it comes to his movies. He was effortlessly funny in this film too but the show stealer would definitely be his friend, Sharath Ravi, who was terrific with his comedy timing. But that’s that. It’s not a film by filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj but only by a short filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj. The film would qualify as one of the films made by contestants but not by a maestro. He’d have easily made this film during his Nalaya Iyakunar days, who knows maybe it’s one of the films he had in mind during those days but couldn’t make. So, he had made it this time with better production value. Except for the scene where the tyre rolls with “Oru kili uruguthu” background, there wasn’t anything funny. But it’s a troupe which has been beaten to death by now, so it fails even in that aspect.
So, my rating of the short film would be almost of the same order it appears on screen.
Reunion < Coffee, Anyone? < Miracle < Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum < Ilamai Idho Idho
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