3 Storeys

Well the thinking and creativity behind this movie is all reavealed at the end of the movie which is quite surpising. Never seen a movie with this kind of twist before definitely a good watch ! All the actors were great but the story of middle one seems quite a repitative otherwise the other two were quite good !

NO SPOILERS

The film from debutant director Arjun Mukherjee fell into the genre which is being hardly sought of in Bollywood. The film starts of with the narration in a female voice and focuses on a young lad(pulkit) looking to buy a house near his office. He comes by Flory Mendonca played by Renuka Sahane and unarguably the strongest performance in the film.Well here begins the first story,Flory a widow has been living in mayanagar(three storey chawl) and ready to sell the flat.Though expensive,the lad agrees to buy it and a sinister plot creeps in the climax. The second story begins with the unhappily married life of varsha due to his abusive husband. The weakest of the three stories comprises of the back story of varsha with her lover and an obvious relation to the present as the story moves on The third story deals with two love birds from different religion and their family not approving their marriage. The whole cast was superb specially Renuka Sahane.The first story was unique,well executed and the most intriguing of the three.The second story was equipped with nice performance from Masumeh Makhija(varsha) and sharman joshi(shankar) but laid down by predictable plot and mediocre script The third story was better and also supported well by the lead actors. The film will bound u to the seats till the end. A nice work from director Arjun Mukherjee too.The background score was perfect.

A good film to watch 7.1/10

This week's most refreshing release '3 Storeys' shows three different stories set in a chawl of Mumbai. A well written fast pace thriller this film keeps you hooked from the start till its end.

Each story has a certain gripping element along with a surprise ending that you never see coming. The stories include Flory(Renuka Shahane), a grieving mother and a businessman Vilas(Pulkit Samrat) looking for a kholi, Varsha(Masumeh Makhija), facing an abusive marriage and her ex-lover Shankar(Sharman Joshi) & Malini(Aisha Ahmed) and Suhail(Ankit Rathi) two youngsters deeply in love but separated by parental pressure with Leela(Richa Chadda) as the narrator.

The characters share almost equal screen time with each of them giving admirable performances specially Renuka, Sharman and Masumeh. However the strength of the movie lays in its writing and the short run-time. The screenplay is written by Althea Dalmas Kaushal who in past has been a part of flops like 'Happy New Year' and 'Noor' and is brilliantly directed by Arjun Muherjee(making his debut).

'3 Storeys' is a good example of how a film rapidly moving movie can be executed within a short time span. You come out of the theater with growing respect towards these low-budget classics.

Each story described in the film has a twist, possibly a couple of you would even think about what it is, however the way it has been described by Arjun Mukerjee, that is absolutely commendable. I haven't seen any film where the surprise element in the story has been described so unpretentiously without going emotional.

The main issue here is that while the screenplay in the first half is tight and connecting, the second half loses it's grasp a bit particularly in the last story. In any case, the film figures out how to shock us indeed in the peak, a turn that none of us anticipated.

While narration is great, and screenplay could have been somewhat better, one office where the film gets full marks is the acting department!

3 Storeys looks like an anthology film, and almost is, with the exception that the stories are indirectly tied together. A narrator takes you through the lives of inhabitants of a 3-storied chawl in Mumbai. These characters are from different walks of life and what makes them interesting are concepts of revenge and fate. Renuka Shahane plays an old Goan lady currently looking to rent her chawl flat for which she has quoted a price 4 times than its market rate; Masumeh Makhija's character is a victim of domestic abuse by her alcoholic husband and is startled to find her past coming back to her; and Aisha Ahmed is a naive, young woman in love with her neighbour, unbeknownst to the fact which her mother has been hiding from her for long. More than the stories themselves, what elevates the appeal of 3 Storeys is the moral of each story. I'm pretty sure that you are going to turn your head when you find out what Shahane's character is up to, as you would when you indulge in other characters and their realistic stories. The entire cast do a decent job in following director Arjun Mukerjee's cues as he takes them on a ride to say few things about this suspense story we call life. However, once you reach the climax, you get a feeling about the mediocre drama that you enjoyed while it lasted. While some characters are written well, others have shades of traditionalism; and at the end, it slowly moves to the territory of contrived drama, which had the editors cut out, would have made the whole broth tastier. In an attempt to give us happier endings, 3 Storeys sacrifices its art, making it a sweet little film that is just not great enough to talk about once you complete watching it. TN.