Everybody Says I'm Fine!

I was more than surprised to see Rahul Bose create an artistically moving and very indigenous piece of cinema in his clever directorial debut Everybody Says I'm Fine! that I was completely hooked to the screen the entire 100 minutes even as lead actor Rehan Engineer puts up a wooden face whenever he is supposed to act. For a film released in 2001, watching it in 2018 feels like a run down the memory lane, especially if you have been in Mumbai, as director Bose checks all the boxes in his product - Apple computers, upscale salon, trendy socialites, typical socialite talk with that vanity, young romance - and I sat there looking at them like a kid drooling at an ice-cream van's menu. Engineer plays a beauty salon owner who is also the head stylist/barber in the heart of the city and which is frequented by the socialites of the upper class Mumbai. Under his clean-shaven look and balding mane is the absurd power of hearing another person's thoughts whenever he cuts their hair, giving him a wholly different picture of the person than what they have concocted for the outside world. I don't think I have ever seen that concept out in the wild and it is absolutely fascinating to be a spectator with Xen, the character, as opens his shop, listens to a dozen inner thoughts, and goes back to sleep. Everybody Says I'm Fine! is made linearly and has bold scenes at every juncture, which I think must have contributed to how it was received close to two decades earlier. It even has Bose in a starring role (an eccentric), Boman Irani at his fine air of a businessman, and Pooja Bhatt - all of whom are so fun to watch regardless of their characters. I was blown away by the entire parade of proceedings that Everybody Says I'm Fine! churns out with so much substance and energy that I was a bit disappointed by how it ends. Looked like Bose was unable to bid adieu to his creative flow as the comedy drama ends like a bag full of water and one tiny leaking hole. Everyone interested in Bollywood should check it out though. TN.

Hairdresser Xen had a traumatic childhood. He was in a recording booth when a short killed his parents at the mixing desk. He watched in silence as they died. Since then he has been able to read people's thoughts and hence see past their fronts. He generally is able to help those he sees but one girl, Nikita doesn't seem to be readable.

This film starts in a mix. The death scene and the way Xen reads minds are strange and feel ill at ease in the hairdressing saloon. However once you get the grip of the setup it becomes a lot better. The film seems to be saying – be real rather than front up, and for the most part it says it. However when Xen begins to `help' his customers he does it by encouraging their fronts rather than helping them to be real. With both of his first two customers he helps he builds on their fake lives and helps them to believe their lies. Is the film saying that it's better to have a front than deal with reality?

The title suggests that it is looking at the culture of people just saying `fine' when asked `how are you' rather than saying `actually I'm a mess'. But the film never says this and supports the fake opposite. The only interesting thing it does do well is to show that the quiet ones, the successful ones and the loud outgoing ones all have issues and problems – we all do. However this is lost in the final half an hour – when we have the fake lives supported and a strange plot about abuse that doesn't seem to have a point to make.

For the most part this is entertaining and interesting, it's only the last 30 minutes or so where it badly loses it's way. The gentle pace of the film makes it enjoyable even when the meaning is muddled. The cast are generally good – even if some have little to do or play Asian stereotypes. Rehuan Engineer (yes, really) is very good as Xen and likeable but Koel Purie is confused and misused as Nikita.

I must say it was passable, but I'd expected more – it set itself up nicely and avoided being daft but really it didn't make a good point and just ended up confusing itself and getting all twisted up.

An excellent film...funny, charming, wry, yet also gritty and compelling. Nikita (Koel Purie) has a cathartic scene reminiscent of Liv Ullman in Bergman's "Face to Face." She submerges herself in a fugue state unflinchingly. The climactic turn of events lift the film to a more profound conclusion than the first half augured.

I saw this film, the director's first attempt, when it debuted at the Philly Film Festival in 2002. I found it to be VERY disappointing. Without giving too much away, the director takes a clichéd Bollywoodian approach to very strong themes of sexual abuse, revenge and violence.

In the Q& A period following the film, the director admitted that some of the events were based on his true experiences, he explained as well that he had wanted to avenge a close friend through the story he portrayed. It is quite clear that he was much too emotionally close to resolving his own demons when he made this film. As a result, the film is extremely naive. Being passionate about cinema and world cinema in particular, I walked away incredibly frustrated.

About a barber who can hear the flow of thinking of the person to whom he is giving a haircut. He helps them(his customers) courteously but somehow directly by the information unknowingly given by themselves. He meets a girl and gets intimate with her, only to find that she has been abused by her successful father whom himself is also the barber's customer.