Shubhra Gupta

If whimsy had an address, it would be Wes Anderson, whose confections can either delight or dismay. His Cannes competition entry The Phoenician Scheme has nestled firmly into the latter for me: his latest flight of fancy, quite literally, with his lead character traversing the skies in a private jet, being ejected at regular intervals, turns the film into a survival manual. The film is set in the 50s. Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa Zsa Korda, a wealthy businessman who has a half-brother (Benedict Cumberbatch, almost unrecognisable under a thatched beard), a daughter who is a nun, and nine sons. If Korda wasn’t properly eccentric, he wouldn’t be a Wes character: accordingly, he decides to bequeath his empire to Liesl (Mia Threapleton), whether she likes it or not.

A film about cinephiles for cinephiles is one way to describe ‘Nouvelle Vague’ (New Wave), Richard Linklater’s love letter to movies. You could also say that it is about the making of ‘Breathless’, which it is. But it’s truly, gloriously more. It’s about being young and alive, broke and audacious, lucking into friends who make you come alive, having each other’s backs — all while changing the world. In the 50s, a bunch of French film critics were busy discovering the joys of ‘middlebrow Hollywood commercial’ cinema, which was treated with disdain by a high-minded earlier generation. Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Chaude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were among those who contributed to Cahiers du Cinema, a journal which published these rebels-with-a-righteous-cause.

The Rajkumar and the Aam Kumari. He is royalty, she is middle-class. He rides horses on the beach, sculpted bare chest a-gleam. She’s shiny too, but more from the plebeian pursuit of running. Cool tracks, though, and very sculpted too, but of course, chalk and cheese. Aviraaj Singh (Ishaan Khatter) and Sophia Kanmani Shekhar (Bhumi Pednekar) spark, clash, part, meet again. You know the drill; classic rom com territory. Add in big baubles and bigger palaces, , a phalanx of princes and princesses, and the full Rajasthan rajasi retinue, with the the constant flurry of hukum, khammaghani, leheriya headgear, in place.

A doctor comes to a village, there to discover a place where a familiar mix of innocence and craftiness is at play, where a quack has a bustling practice, and where he, the well-intentioned doc, learns life lessons. Replace Amol Parashar’s doctor with Jitendra Kumar’s sachivji, and you will get the set-up for Panchayat, TVF’s much-loved show, with so little difference as to be negligible. But given that clueless shehari babus having to check their privilege can make for an entertaining ride, there will always be similar shows.

Within a few minutes of the film’s opening, I asked myself: what am I doing here? Two hours, ten minutes, and what seems like a lifetime of groaning-and-moaning later, I have zero answers to that one. Horror comedies may be the flavour of the season after the ‘Stree’ jamboree, but even its part 2 was nowhere close to the delightful original. In this new film, we get a ‘The’, emphasising that this is not your random garden variety of bhootni, but a very specific one, with a double i to boot. Ergo, this one will stand apart. Which it does. It proudly and flagrantly stands apart from any vestiges of plot and production values, forget about sense and sensibility.

There are flashes of familiarity in Black, White and Gray—Love Kills in the broad thematic connections it is attempting at, between young lovers on the run, and the obstacles that come in their way. Patriarchy, parental opposition, class differences, power structures, are all present in this crime drama, reminding you of several others that have come before. But it stands out in the way it takes us along the ride, joining and erasing the dots, while creating vivid portraits of its characters and societal mores. I watched the six episodes of about 40-45 minutes each in a single gulp, because it got me invested in the people it was tracking, and wanted to know what happens next. Yes, there are contrivances — the structure of a documentary filmmaker speaking to ‘real’ people, with a parallel track being played out by those standing in for them, is the biggest of them all — and a few slack, improbable patches, but they are not deal breakers.

Seven years after the original ‘Raid’, IRS DCP Amay Patnaik (Ajay Devgn) returns to create yet another storm in a den of corruption. This time around, he’s in Bhoj, a town ruled by Dada Manohar Bhai (Riteish Deshmukh), whom the locals worship. Dada Bhai, in turn, worships, literally, at the feet of his Amma (Surpriya Pathak): he’s the obedient son, and the clean-as-a-whistle ruler. It’s only Amay, the sharpest card in the income tax department, who suspects that there is something jet black in this very white ‘dal’, and starts stirring the pot vigorously, hoping for the real picture to emerge.

Honest customs officer up against a wall of corruption. Costao, based on the real-life story of Costao Fernandes who fought with all his might to stall gold-smuggling in the Goa of the 90s, has Nawazuddin Siddiqui in a role that’s worthy of his talents, but a script which is distinctly lacklustre. A film that starts with a voiceover alerts you to the fact that the writers couldn’t find a more original way to tell their story. In this instance, Costao’s loving daughter is made the conduit, and the film becomes as much tell as it is show.