Movie: Bangalore Days
Director: Anjali Menon
Cast: Dulquer Salmaan, Fahadh Faasil, Nazriya Nazim, Nivin Pauly, Parvathy, Isha Talwar, Nithya Menen
Rating: ****
Bangalore Days is a film filled with dollops of warming nostalgic charm. It brings out a fulfilling grin in your faces of watching something that’s very simple yet heart-tugging. It’s of a kind you know that’ll move you deep inside, for long in spite of the momentariness of the experience. A work that’s so lighthearted on the surface level, the soul it primarily sustains is due it’s celebratory air. Instead of friends, necessarily children at heart who refuse to grow up in spite of the times, Anjali Menon wants to grab hold of the familial atmosphere and pins a beloved trio together on the frame as cousins. The intimacy is a scale higher and the blood-connection helps them share aspects which they might not have with their pals. Nivin Pauly and Dulquer Salman have only been cast opposite Nazriya Nazim in rom-com’s prior to this. The director doesn’t go for the obvious here and ensures that their comfort level contributes to their mischievous energy as cousins.
Elaborately paced at three hours, the length is indeed a gift to its ideas. There’s not a single incompletely sketched equation. Not for a moment you want to question the reason behind the emotional outpours of the characters. Not even when there’s an incomplete expression on the face of Arjun (Dulquer Salman) or the unusual mildness in a Miss Congeniality like Divya (Nazriya Nazim) when the sudden astrologer-consulted marriage isn’t as much about the bed of roses, she envisages it to be. In a conversation between the cousins and Fahad Fasil, they share an instance of past where Divya misguides her grandma of a pizza of being another form of ‘Appam’. The girl’s embarrassed and Shiva Das (Faahad Fasil) mistakes that to be a childhood incident when it actually surfaced a couple of months ago.
Their romantic equations are very much their own reflections. Arjun is the ‘dude’ to break rules. He flees from a boarding school, has a madness for graffiti and is a professional racer. Only son to divorced parents, he is also a gypsy, shifts places continuously and doesn’t know much about longing, but is implicitly dying for some. His lady love, Sarah (Parvathi Menon) very literally in her physicality is that. The initial attraction is due to her words, the voice unlike Kuttan who falls for a girl owing to hormonely ‘pulls’. But physically impaired like his emotional dimension is his girl where he finds an outlet for his long-starved thoughts. As interesting as Arjun is Divya, the most cinematic of the trio. You can win her heart with the smaller pleasures. Kuttan is the one to provide comic-relief. Stuck between modernity and cultural fondness, he has an eye to appreciate his father’s poetry, wants a traditional girl for marriage and hates his software job. Each of the cousins is on a hunt for something and the scenarios change from time to time. They are immensely close but draw firm lines in terms of their candid confessions.
All their individual stories have adept potential to be full-fledged features. However, it’s also the silently underplayed part of Das that drives the film as much as the three. He’s less in color. One of the film’s best situations is one when Kuttan reads the very same letter from his father in two contrasting versions. Anjali Menon makes it better for you when Arjun spots the letter’s origin to be Goa.
During the climactic portions when you know of Arjun’s return to racing, you prompt before Sarah that her flight is due the very same day. The better part of Bangalore Days is the universal nature of the conflicts. A married woman aiming to complete her MBA, a techie sick of his mechanical life preferring his hometown to a fast paced city like Bangalore, a hippie not finding acceptance in a conventional society and man trying his best to get over his past are situations that urban crowds can surely identify themselves with. The multi-lingual nature of the film is another asset. You listen to Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, English and Hindi, all at once. That explains how well the maker has captured the cosmopolitan ways of Bangalore. Bangalore Days is reality excusing itself to be entertainment. No complaints at all Anjali Menon.
Review by Srivathsan N. First published in Cinegoer.net