Three weddings and four funerals

Film: Finding Fanny

Director: Homi Adajania

It is said that a film can change your day, your mind or your life; and Homi Adajania’s Finding Fanny is a strange little tale that, if nothing else, will make your day. The director’s third, this film unfolds comfortably around you and makes you live its story while it is happening to its characters.

The film opens with a first person narration by Angie (Deepika Padukone) who leads us into a quiet village called Pocolim in Goa, where Ferdinand Pinto (the post-master of that village, played by Naseeruddin Shah) receives a letter he had sent 46 years ago – a letter expressing his love for Stephanie ‘Fanny’ Fernandes. For those of among you who are immune to irony, read the previous statement again.

Pocolim is a small village, and as Savio da Gama (Arjun Kapoor) promptly states in a scene, “Here, everyone’s business is everyone else’s business.” Angie is a widow, having lost her husband Gabo (played sportingly by Ranveer Singh who lights up his 15 seconds on screen with as much joie-de-vivre as he does in that Ranveer Ching song) on their wedding day. Oh, let it be mentioned that he dies due to choking on the figurines atop the wedding cake. If the irony in the film was not clear to you with the postmaster’s mail not being delivered, here’s your second chance.

                                     

Angie’s mother-in-law, Rosalina ‘Rosie’ Eucharistica (Dimple Kapadia) is a woman of repute and a control freak. Now, add to this mix a renowned painter (Dom Pedro played by Pankaj Kapur) with a fetish for big women, and you have a melting pot of quirkiness.

Here’s a legend to help you link the five characters quickly. Angie, a widow, wants to help Ferdinand find Fanny, using Dom Pedro’s car, which he bought from Savio. She convinces Dom Pedro to lend the car by allowing him to spend some more time with his muse and her mother-in-law – Rosie. And since none of this sorry lot can drive a car, Savio, Angie’s old flame, is compelled to do so. Also in the car - Rosie’s cat.

There you have it, an unlikely group on an unlikely mission to find love. The only thing common between all of them is longing and the quintessential need for love. The outcome of this crazy road trip is quite predictable, however, this predictability does not stem out of you having out-witted the writer and the maker, but instead out of hope. The film does to the characters what you wish to be done unto them.

The humor of Finding Fanny is its situations, more than its words, which means irrespective of whether you watch it in Hindi or English, you will have laughed at the same instances. Most of this aforementioned humor is embedded in irony and unless you watch closely, you may miss out on certain jokes that have been painstakingly constructed within the narrative. However, it must be said that the writers have caught the right vein in writing the dialogues for the English version of the film. “Waiting for Christmas or what?”, “Why means what?”, “I think there’s a robber outside!”, are the dialogues that seem like a part of the setting. One simply cannot pull off writing Hindi dialogues for a Goan character without ridiculing the Goan or Hindi or both.

The setting plays a very important role in the story. First and foremost, these characters could not exist outside the realm of Goa – the perfect blend of eccentric, compassionate, loving, comical, simple-minded and otherwise content folk. Secondly, it sets up a great backdrop for a journey, especially those where you end up finding something completely different than what you set out to look for. To top it off, Anil Mehta’s camera has managed to capture some splendid landscapes of a vintage car easing through the twirls and swirls of exotic locations.

The ensemble cast further outline the caricatures of their characters. Naseeruddin Shah is underwhelming, albeit sweet, as Ferdinand. Pankaj Kapur as Dom Pedro is sincere and does no more than is asked. As for Dimple Kapadia, this is perhaps one of her career best performances and emphatically stands out among the group. Arjun Kapoor as a disgruntled lover is bearable but can do much better. And Deepika, whose character is a personification of The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love, is simply adorable.

You love the characters, care for them and you feel the same way about life as they do. And somewhere in the first half hour, the story doesn’t matter anymore. You simply take a seat in the car with and try to find Fanny. Aren’t all our lives simply a search for the proverbial Fanny? (Pun intended, totally. Just like in the title.) A gamble, a venture in the dark, a chance…all of it built on hope. And amidsty its three weddings and four funerals, if there is one thing Finding Fanny does, is tell you that you are not alone in your search, it is with you.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Sleepy Hollow

Makarand Deshpande seems to have carried the sensibilities of the unbothered hitch-hiker he played in Swades into his filmmaking. Sona Spa, a film made on an unconventional subject, is nothing but a surface level comment on the ills of modern lifestyle.

The film revolves around a premise of delegating the task of completing your sleep to someone else. However, doing so will open that delegate to the world of your dreams, thereby ridding you off the stress. Yes, does sound an Inception-like plot. However, what Christopher Nolan does with extreme craftsmanship is that he gets you so involved in the story that you do not stop to question the plausibility of the concept. Makarand’s film, sadly, has a story that is too preachy and once you get the gist of it, you stop paying attention to the déjà-vu dialogues narrated by Naseeruddin Shah, referred to as Babaji throughout the film.

On paper, the concept appears quite intriguing, but the film fails to translate the psychological thriller onto screen. The film focuses on two of the ‘sleep workers’; one of whom is a middle-class girl from Pune overcoming a family tragedy while the other is a rich girl from Mumbai belonging to a dysfunctional family and coping with the death of her mother. The plot outline may interest you at first, but it unfolds in an unflattering manner leaving you disappointed. A lot of the blame goes to the form in which the film is presented. A dark theme like this is presented with flat visuals and primitive graphics, and is shot like casual coverage of events; lending it a crude look which doesn’t generate any interest.

Naseeruddin Shah, who is the largest figure on the promotional material of this film doesn’t play a very important role in the film. He is reduced to being on a television screen at the Spa or simply heard in the background, save for a few scenes where he preaches about the importance of sleep by breaking the fourth wall. Ritu and Richa, played by Aahana Kumrah and Shruti Vyas try to make the most of the poorly crafted scenes and imperfect dialogue. Aahana, shows promise and maybe we will get to see her in a better film in the near future.

Makarand’s sense of humor, like him, appears in the film for brief moments. For instance, Babaji (Naseer) is said to have settled in Seattle because people are ‘Sleepless In Seattle’. But apart from that, the film is a superficial commentary on life as we know it, in a way that is seen in cheap pop-psychological stories and pretentious college plays.


Rating - 1.5 out of 5