S. R. Praveen

Grief does not always arrive as a torrent. Sometimes, it seeps in ever so slowly, evoked by things which used to be mundane till a few days ago. In Prasanth Vijay’s film Daayam (Inheritance), being screened in the Malayalam Cinema Today section of the 28th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), an old voice note from her deceased mother about some daily chores brings 17-year old Kalyani (Aathira Rajeev) to tears.

Pared down to its bare bones, Dinjith Ayyathan’sEko is a story of the search for a missing man, a colourful character about whom infinite chronicles and conflicting accounts are in circulation. To bite into these bare bones is not really the point. It is to savour the whole act of reaching it and revelling in that pleasure. Just like through a dense, deceptive forest with uncharted territory at every turn, the viewer is slowly drawn into this world where not a single character can be fully trusted.

All that two people who were eons ago the world to each other get, when they meet years later, is just a little while (’Ithiri Neram’) to spend together. Each word uttered between them carries with it the weight of their past and the mystery of each other’s present and the paths their lives have taken in the intervening years. In Prasanth Vijay’s third film Ithiri Neram, much has changed in the lives of Anjana (Zarin Shihab) and Anish (Roshan Mathew) from the last time they talked, yet when they meet, it is as if they never stopped talking.

Horror really hits home when it is evoked in the mundane. Only when one encounters it in the unlikeliest of forms would the chill seep slowly, imperceptibly down our spine. In Dies Irae, Rahul Sadasivan mines horror out of even a gentle breeze caressing a person’s hair, so much so that after the movie, the feeling of wind in the hair somewhat ceases to be exhilarating as it used to be. There is more…fear, passed on to us through something as commonplace as a ray of light or the click sound of a hair clip.

One of the surest bets for audience appreciation in the current purple patch of Malayalam cinema has been realistic police procedurals. An intriguing screenplay bringing out all the crucial little details of the investigation and a fairly surprising twist in the tale could turn a film into a box office winner. But this trend is now slowly turning into a formula, with makers at times mechanically repeating all the familiar beats of the genre.

A kidnapped girl, a missing dog, exotic fishes that get stolen, a feared Mexican mafia don and a couple of smaller dons, a psychopath, a bumbling policeman, and a pet detective. One would need this basic checklist to keep track of the numerous subplots that are cramped into The Pet Detective, directed by debutant Praneesh Vijayan The writers appear to be aware of this rather confusing mix that they get one of the characters to periodically narrate the series of events till then, just so that no one gets lost. But then, it is sometimes a pleasure to get lost in a world in which things do not get serious beyond a point, just like in comics. Clearly, this is the space that the makers are aiming for, where even a Mafia don does not look too dangerous, but at times ends up as a laughing stock. In its staging, editing patterns and over-the-top performances, the film attempts to capture this comic energy. Yet, for a film of this nature, the jokes that land well are just about a handful.

The simplest of stories, even the seemingly unappealing ones, can turn into fairly engaging pieces of cinema once it gets into the right hands. In Avihitham, filmmaker Senna Hegde, who co-wrote the film with Ambareesh Kalathera, does not have an elaborate story to tell, but teases out several strands out of it to pull off something which keeps one engaged.

Balti comes accompanied with the tag of a ‘sports action film’, with Kabaddi being the sport in the spotlight. For a while in the beginning, debutant filmmaker Unni Sivalingam appears to be keen on living up to this tag, serving us some intensely fought and tastefully shot Kabaddi matches. But by the halfway point, Kabaddi gets firmly pushed to the background, only for a glimpse of it to be shown in the epilogue.