Contrary to popular Indian belief, South India shits out as much bad cinema as Bollywood. Varane Ayusshmand, Dulquer Salmaan’s first production venture, is a testament to this fact. The film is one faux-pas after another; an Altman ensemble film gone awry with characters just schlepping around aimlessly on screen.
One storyline involves an angsty girl who actually wants an arranged marriage in Kerala, one of the few Indian states that does not propagate the practice (because normcore is so in right now?) Another storyline involves Dulquer Salmaan and his baby brother who names his pet chicken, KFC (not sure if that’s funny, cringe-y, a symptom of lazy writing or all the above) and another that borrows a little too liberally from Jack Nicholson/Helen Hunt’s 1997 romcom, As Good As It Gets, and features a grumpy old man with anger management issues (Suresh Gopi) who falls for a mild-mannered sweetheart of a woman (Shobhana).
To make matters worse, these forgettable, deathly dull characters all seem to have sob stories that they feel compelled to share with us. One character grew up with a mother who was deaf, one character’s mother – and father – died in a car accident and one character had an abusive husband that allegedly beat the daylights out of her. These manipulative, hard-to-believe backstories don’t pull your heartstrings so much as attempt to fucking yank them out. What’s more, they do not drive the film at all which makes me think they were only placed in the film to coax a tear or two from emotionally labile audience members.
It worked, the guy sitting next to me in the movie theater was sniffling.
As disjointed as Dulquer Salmaan’s last memorable Malayalam film, Charlie, was, at least it had an infectious joie de vivre about it. Varane Avayushmund is sans magic or message; it’s an empty vessel of a film that does no justice to either Shobhana-ji, a celluloid goddess or Dulquer Salmaan, one of the few Indian “chocolate boys” who actually can act.
And if you’re wondering why I peppered this review with French phrases, it’s because Shobhana’s character in the film also happens to speak French which is one of the many, many absolutely pointless plot devices in the film.
Quel bordel – what a mess.
