Param Sundari Is An Affront To All Malayalis & Kerala
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Why set this love story in Kerala at all, only to give viewers the impression that everyone in God’s Own Country (including the local tea-shop owner) speaks fluent Hindi? asks Pratibha Joy.
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| | | Cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Janhavi Kapoor | | | | DILLI BOY Param (Sidharth Malhotra) refuses to work for his wealthy father; he’d rather chase the next start-up unicorn, burning through Dad’s money on flop after flop. His latest, last-ditch punt is a dating app that promises 100% compatibility. Param is the guinea pig and — hold your horses — is matched with Thekkepaatu Sundari Damodaran Pillai (Janhvi Kapoor) in far-off Nangiarkulangara, Alappuzha. The last time I heard the name Sundari, it belonged to the neighbour’s pristine white (and genuinely beautiful) cat. It hasn’t been a commonly used name for Malayali women since Gen X, at least. Hell, even Sundari’s pet elephant gets a better name: Rukmini. Like most Malayalis, I took offence at Janhvi’s mangling of the name and the language in the trailer. I consoled myself that I’d never have to sit through whatever else director Tushar Jalota had cobbled together in this milan of two states. Or so I thought. In a cruel twist of fate, I was the one who had to take one for the team. Sigh. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! Contrary to the social-media clamour about Janhvi’s casting and the call to hire an actual Malayali actor, I don’t buy it. I see why Tushar wanted star power fronting his rom-com; his target audience is north of the Vindhyas, not Malayalis with Kerala in their veins. He’s selling a postcard-Onam to viewers who’ll be charmed to see elephants, kalarippayattu, Kathakali and more crammed into one frame. And that crowd would rather see Janhvi than, say, Keerthy Suresh, Anupama Parameswaran or Nayanthara—all of whom can speak Malayalam and have a following across the south. It’s also the crowd that will swallow his stereotype of the horny ‘Mallu nurse’. |
| | The Roses: Wonderfully Thorny, Deceptively Poignant
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The Roses is a caustic satire about a wealthy couple struggling to stay married. Rahul Desai reviews.
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| | | Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman | | | | BASED ON WARREN ADLER'S NOVEL The War of the Roses, Jay Roach’s The Roses is fundamentally different from Danny DeVito’s 1989 film adaptation starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. The caustic black comedy about a wealthy American couple going through a bitter divorce is reframed as a caustic satire about a wealthy British couple struggling to stay married. The razor-sharp humour is a coping mechanism for the characters, not so much a narrative genre. When they’re mean to each other, it’s amusing because of how creatively they weaponise words, but it’s also dark for how far they’re willing to go to wound each other. Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman share generational chemistry as Theo and Ivy Rose, the picture-perfect parents for whom a seven-year itch surfaces when the traditional gender balance is upended by contrasting career trajectories. Theo’s reputation as a star architect is ruined after a maritime museum disaster; he becomes a ‘freelancer’ and stay-at-home dad. Former chef and homemaker Ivy becomes a star restaurateur when her modest seafood shack gets a five-star review. The roles get reversed, and bit by bit, the resentment builds. The stakes rise. They go from being edgy bohemian soulmates with witty repartee (and a ready injection to let Ivy ‘enjoy’ her berry allergy) to being that poisonous couple with divergent ideas of how to bring up their kids. |
| | Lokah Chapter 1: Malayalam Cinema Gets A Marvel-Style Superheroine
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Lokah's ingenuity lies in how Chandra's backstory is rooted in Kerala folklore, yet reshaped with a believable, contemporary spin, writes Neelima Menon.
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| | | Cast: Kalyani Priyadarshan, Naslen | | | | LOKAH CHAPTER 1 establishes its world with crackling mystery and momentum. We’re dropped straight into an arresting opener: Chandra, a lithe young woman in black — bruised, shaken — crouches behind an empty drum to catch her breath while a voice on the phone urges her on. The scene has the urgency of survival cinema, the precision of a martial-arts thriller, and the raw charge of a character study. Then the film flips register: her image pulls apart and reassembles as animation, dissolving into an abstract burst of orange, grey and red before the title card. In minutes, Lokah signals both its aesthetic ambition and its refusal to be boxed into conventional storytelling. As Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan ) settles into city life — working late-night shifts at a café and retreating to an apartment washed in sombre greys — the film gradually introduces us to its wider set of characters. One standout moment arrives when Sunny (Naslen) encounters Chandra for the first time. Their locked gaze carries an unusual charge: the scene deftly intertwines the aura of mystery surrounding Chandra with Sunny’s effortless sense of youth and carefreeness. It’s a small but striking example of how the film seamlessly weaves character details into its visual storytelling. |
| | Hridayapoorvam Is Quintessential Sathyan Anthikad
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Hridayapoorvam is airy, light on its feet, and as comforting as a warm beverage on a rainy day, writes Aditya Shrikrishna .
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| | | Cast: Mohanlal, Malavika Mohanan, Sangeeth Prathap | | | | SANDEEP BALAKRISHNAN (Mohanlal), a successful cloud kitchen owner from Kochi, possesses a generous heart. His tenants are three aspiring filmmakers who eat in his kitchen for free, and he treats them like his own children. They narrate their script to him, an ultra-violent revenge story that disgusts him to the point of disowning them. Even their insistence that “violence is trending” doesn’t change his mind. This scene, from Sathyan Anthikad’s new film Hridayapoorvam, is a comedic aside, but it also conveys the self-awareness of this film. It’s quintessential Anthikad — light on its feet, airy and like a warm beverage on a rainy afternoon. ALSO READ | A Journey Through The Wit, Warmth & Human Stories Of Sathyan Anthikad’s Cinema Sandeep’s generous heart is courtesy of an army man from Pune. The aptly titled Hridayapoorvam begins with the fanfare of the man’s heart in a cold case arriving in Kerala from Pune just in time for the transplant procedure. For a change, a film begins not with a hero dying (only to be brought back later) or with a hero saving others from death, but with his survival of a delicate procedure in an operation theatre, one where he receives a new heart. Sandeep survives. He returns home with a new heart and a new nurse in Jerry (Sangeeth Prathap). He keeps a close eye on his business, and I mean that literally. He is always on his phone, not watching reels or doom scrolling like a normal person, but observing his kitchen and establishment via the CCTV cameras in every corner and pulling up his employees if they so much as take a wrong step. All of this is played for laughs. |
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| Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think is worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. |
| In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an hour on this. |
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