Navarasa

Cinematographers-turned-directors always have a special delicate, indrawn way of looking at life - and this isn't the first time Santosh Sivan looks at a fringe community. Sivan plays with the concepts of light and dark, shadow and sunlight to depict the ambiguities that underline human sexuality. Swetha's shock and incredulity at the idea of her beloved uncle being a woman in a man's body is a clever device to distance and familiarize the audience with the third sex. Often, the director's camera tends to flirt with exotica, but not at the cost of the plot. There are long passages of soulful visuals, for example the eunuchs huddled in a dreamy blur at the fair dressed in widows' whites after marrying the deity Aravan...here the cinematographer in Sivan coalesces with a gentle jolt in the director. on the whole, this movie is a worth watching....