As a cheeky hint, the film begins with a song that calls out the various shades of grey in modern love. This occurs as we see Vicky jump across rooftops to get to Rumi's room, where they make love as Rumi's sister stands guard against the door, ready to warn them if any elderly from the household was to come that way. Rumi and Vicky lust and long for each other, she is forced to get married by the household, Vicky is not ready yet, in comes an NRI groom who falls for Rumi and is ready to give her time. All hell breaks loose.
If this sounds a bit tropy, maybe it is. But with "Manmarziyaan", Kanika Dhillon takes a love triangle and opens the pandora's box wide open. As another cheeky lyric goes, this is an update on the tropes. Her interest here is in understanding the different layers, the intentions, and the circumstances that define modern love in the Indian context. This aligns with Anurag Kashyap's ever-growing penchant for exploring the dark corners of the human mind and heart. Together they weave a riotous narrative of three souls determined to burn themselves in love. Taapsee Pannu is the embodiment of this whole shebang - a firebrand, outshining everything and everyone else in this outfit. Vicky Kaushal is an impressive counterpoint, whose taking beautiful strides in his career, with the nuance getting better with each role.
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Much of Telugu Cinema usually has a dearth of stories to tell. When it does find new stories to tell, it often lacks ingenuity in the narrative. This is a paradox, because the Telugu speaking regions aren't exactly short of stories to tell, proven by how illustrious our newspapers tend to get. Of course, a lot of films have their basis on the hinterlands of these regions. They derive their characters from there, their conflicts, resolutions, and emotions are inspired by them; yet the narrative is usually lost while being translated to formulaic tedium.
Hence, I was naturally elated that, with "Rangasthalam", even commercial Telugu Cinema had found a new language. A much needed, fresher one. Yet, one cannot neglect the feeling that the film, its language, characters, and background still feel like a staging, and not a setting. A well thought out, well executed one, but a staging nonetheless. That is not the case with "C/O Kancharapalem". It is one of those films that feels like the end product of a lifetime spent documenting a region, with a keen eye for events, details, and emotions. I read somewhere that Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" ends with a freeze frame and that this ending is entirely well deserved, compared to films that exploit that effect as a shortcut to an effective climax. I think it's safe to say that "Aruvi" lies in the same fold as Truffaut's venerable classic - it ends with a freeze frame that is both entirely well deserved and the only way this narrative could have effectively ended without ruining its carefully constructed emotional balance. Let's talk about the narrative first, for which we will have to talk about the film's premise. The film is about small town livelihood disrupted before one's aspirations ever had the chance to achieve clarity, let alone take flight. Aruvi experiences this, and then goes through varied forms of oppression and harassment that society usually offers girls. But then, in a quirky take on karma, she decides to revolt, takes matters into her hands, and churns things up not only for herself but for the folks responsible for her predicament.
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Read MoreAtlantic CityAtlantic City says so much about two people in a relationship, without saying too much.
BooksmartA comedy that is fun, while being just good cinema in the first place.
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