Movie: Ice Cream
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Navdeep, Tejaswi Madivada
Rating: *1/2
The girl, Renu in the film Ice Cream is lonely for a major span. She’s a restless soul, you know. She suspects of being haunted in the desolate mansion due to an elderly ghost. She calls her boyfriend to fret about a problematic tap. Why doesn’t she call a plumber ? Don’t be the one to worry, he’s an uninvited guest later. This is a horror film you realize. People, being idle want to bathe, make love and imagine of solitude as the most discomforting aspect of life.
Ramgopal Varma, inspired by a real incident, makes her mental insecurities seem a joke after all. A new technology is waiting to be unravelled but here it is for the joy of a voyeur. The double entendre that Maruthi introduced through his dialogues take a visual turn. This, coming after Rowdy, a rehash of his Sarkar days is more of a disturbed retelling of Urmila Matondkar’s Kaun with a deceiving label. It’s a potent idea which doesn’t translate its intentions onto the celluloid with an iota of sincerity.
The cinematographer or indeed the director wants to explore the lower-half of a woman’s body more than the mental conflict. Her boyfriend is the sacrificial goat. But, regardless of the company, the girl doesn’t change much. She has her exams coming up but finds it hard to get occupied with her tasks. The heartening aspect of the film is that it stresses less on sounds and more on self-inflicted fear. Coming to it, the use of the strange silences is better. The horror aspect plays the spoilsport with its disapproving redundancy. It could have been to elaborate visually about the trauma she’s going through. The composure is only intermittent and in most of the occasions, you know of the director’s ideas to turn it into a mocking comedic delight. How can a viewer get spooked or even empathise with the characters if the creator isn’t serious himself ? As opposed to the horror or internal mysteries, you only visualise the woman’s character as a personification of the creator’s lust.
The atmosphere is moulded through that jarring combination of fan sounds, leaking taps, knocking doors and the horrifying looks of the house maid. There are hardly a bunch of four characters seen. In that sense, the effort is immensely personal. That’s a warning signature in an equal measure. The best sequence in the film has Navdeep recognising the presence of haunted souls within the house. The theater finally turned alive. It arrives too late for any damage-controlling act to be done. Tejasvi Madivada becomes the director’s muse similar to a Nisha Kothari. In an interview, the director spoke of the need to remake his bad films. Can this be the next one on the list ? No, thanks.
Review by Srivathsan N. First published in Cinegoer.net