Cast: Ash Chandler, Seema Rahmani, Shernaz Patel, Ashwin Mushran, Arika Silaichia, Sohrab Ardeshir
Director: Sandeep Mohan
When the 46-year-old wife of a 38-year-old salesman gets pregnant, having waited years for that moment, it is a joyous occasion for the household, right? Wrong. Not only does the unexpected pregnancy throw the house in disarray, it sets in motion a chain of bizarre events that threaten to unravel the fabric of the mildly dysfunctional family.
The film is a tribute to Goa, with the camera lovingly caressing its sun-kissed beaches, earthy roads and spacious houses steeped in centuries of religion, history and music. Savio, the bumbling protagonist played by actor Ash Chandler is dissatisfied with his job as the Area Sales Manager of an underwear company. He is bullied by the asinine colleague and nephew of one of the top executives of the company. When an attention-seeking, obese receptionist accuses him of staring at her 'chest', he knows he's had enough.
His wife Annie (Shernaz Patel) runs a small eatery and mothers both her husband and their adopted daughter Ruth, a moody teenager with problems of her own. The finely balanced equation of the middleclass household is jolted when the couple breaks the news of the pregnancy to their daughter. Director Sandeep Mohan takes his time to leisurely lay out the film's first half. He adds a football-mad, diabetic Goan strongman with a crack-addict son in love with Annie.
Love Wrinkle Free has been getting rave reviews at the international film festivals, having done the rounds of the Marche Du Film-Cannes Film Festival, South Asian International Film Festival, SAIFF and Indian International Film Festival. Independent filmmaker Mohan, who honed his art under directors such as Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Abhinav Kashyap, tries to revive the lost romance in relationships with his debut film.
He couldn't have selected a better cast. Both Chandler and Seema Rahmani, (last seen in Sudhish Kamath's Good Night, Good Morning) as a free spirited tourist, are completely uninhibited in front of the camera. Chandler brings a genuine smile on your lips with his bemused take on life's twisted ploys to keep him from his ultimate goal - of launching his own line of edible lingerie. He is both gullible and naive, a deadly combination in a man with ambition. His salt-of-the-earth wife on the other hand wants nothing more than to keep her place in the choir team of her church.
But Mohan completely loses his head in the second half, unable to connect the loose ends and leaving the audience to find its way home. His story spins out of hand and the end leaves you wondering why Indian filmmakers repeatedly fall prey to the curse of the second half.
Patel gets lost in the plot, coming across alternately as hysterical and poignant in the peak moments. Ashwin Mushran, as the pot-addict son of Goa's equivalent of the Mafioso, a role reduced to a caricature by Sohrab Ardeshir, is wasted in the bit role. There is no justification for the culmination of Mushran's carelessly hatched plan, probably in his moment of a state of high, the way it did. But it is Chandler and Arika Silaichia, playing Ruth, who somewhat save a film that should not have dragged on for as long as it did, added so many subplots and complications and ended most unsatisfactorily.
But for a first time effort, Love Wrinkle Free is definitely watchable if you can overlook some of its buffoonery and its exhausting length. It has genuinely funny moments, especially those featuring Chandler. But mostly, this film will play on your nostalgia if you love Goa and the smell and feel of its people, its beaches and its quirky way of life. I'll go with 2 and a 1/2 stars for this film.
Rating: 2.5
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