2020, Malayalam, Amazon Prime, 8.3/10 IMDB, Directed by Mahesh Narayanan
A peek in to the virtual world of a handful of characters, resonating our own during the pandemic, that fortunately leaves us gratified, just when it was getting too tedious.
The film opens to a Tinder chat of a random couple Jimmy (Roshan Mathew) and Anu (Darshana Rajendran). Jimmy who had just fallen out of a relationship, moves too quickly and jumps in to proposing to Anu within a week. You are lead to believe either its a rebound relationship or the story of naive girls being deceived online. The later option stands out, as the actor’s previous outing in Kappela strongly attributes to it. I bet the director’s casting was to lure the audience in to that zone subliminally.
Jimmy’s mom asks her nephew, Kevin (Fahadh) a cyber analyst, to check on Anu’s social media. Kevin does it halfheartedly and hastily, ending up giving a green signal to the family to go ahead with the proposal.
The narration with a suspicious hook on Anu’s character, leaves the audience invested in the film. When the plot unveils with one of the many guesses of ours, it still manages to grip the viewers with its experimental virtual making.
The initial online chats does make you uncomfortable to an extend it even makes you guilty of invading some one’s privacy. Patience is tested, as one is annoyingly waiting for the film to move on to the non-virtual lives of the characters. But you soon realize, its purely intentional to boycott the real-life shots of the characters and that’s the unique feature of the film. From there on, you start appreciating the lengths the director had gone to tell the story only through the virtual medium- be it video chats on watsapp and facebook or CCTV footage or the majority of portions which are on team viewer.
Fahadh is a natural and his nonchalant performance in the first half of the film adds strength to the narrative. He outsmarts himself in depicting the culpability of overlooking few vital information that might have saved the awkward trouble for his cousin. Roshan scores well with his love smitten character and strikes a contrast with the panicked helplessness when Anu is missing. Dharshana’s acting is in place but you aren’t drawn towards her for some reason, even with the magnitude of trafficking backdrop and Fahadh’s tear jerking scene on solving the mystery that’s surrounding her.
The team needs a special mention in experimenting the virtual world without much compromise. Few glitches could be given a miss and a major disaster of fatigue is duly saved by the shorter run time of the film.
The striking coincidence in the concept of making seems to be identical to the film ‘Searching’, but one thing that stood out for me was that the virtual compilation worked well for ‘c u soon’ plot more than the film ‘searching’, as the characters rarely meet in real life except for few instances as they live in different countries. The makers here, succeed in bringing it to the Indian platform wisely with subplots and a new narrative which is distinct.
Editing is crucial in a film that’s primarily a virtual replay of events and it even proves a game changer, as it transcends the directorial narration.
A bold attempt by Fahadh and Friends and a good execution by director Mahesh Narayanan.
An engaging good watch.