Everybody Says I'm Fine!

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 hate the inaneness of the run of the mill Bollywood formula flick in general, so I decided to give this film the benefit of the doubt, especially since the writer/director Bose has a few good oeuvres under his belt, albeit as an actor ("English August", a laugh out loud portrayal of a young civil servant's career in rural India, and "Mr and Mrs Iyer", a serious look at the communal divide between Hindus and Muslims woven into a warm and vibrant cross-country bus trip), this film being his foray behind the camera.

The plot revolves around Xen, a young hairdresser who has the bizarre ability to read people's minds while he is cutting their hair. This leads to a series of revelations most of them loosely connected with the story, although some scenes go off on tangents and you're left wondering why they are there.

The film fails on many levels. Real people do not act this way. Yes, the uppermost strata of Indian society are known for their mercedes-driving, club-going, gossipy and fake lifestyles, but several characters in the story are hopelessly overdone. Rahul Boses, Rage, character could have been less melodramatic and less wordy. So could Koel Purie's Nikita. This kind of acting fits nicely into a three-act play, playing these characters on film however is a completely different ball game altogether.

The script tries to be something it is not - intelligent. In a couple of scenes involving Rage and Nikita's interactions with Xen the hairdresser, the scriptwriter sounds like he wants to get as many words into one sentence as he can, leaving the actor gasping for breath after the delivery. Why the verbosity ? There is a benefit to keeping it simple - it won't not look fake!

And finally, does the writer really want us to empathize with a murderer ? And live happily ever after ?

Keep it real, Rahul, keep it real.

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.

A really interesting way to present what could have been an incredibly cheesy plot. It had its non-sequitor moments, but it was otherwise very well done.

Recommended if you're looking for something other than the traditional Hollywood Summer blockbuster.