Language: Malayalam with some English
Okay, so now I know what a dating app looks like. (*inserts laughing emoji)
That’s the platform on which UAE resident Anumol Sebastian meets silly Jimmy Kurian one fine day. By his own admission, Jimmy (played by Roshan Mathew) has a boring job in a banking corporation in the Middle Eastern desert state. We soon learn that he is flighty enough to seek a permanent relationship within days with this young woman he barely knows. (*inserts eye roll)
His mother (Maala Parvathi), with the benefit of maturity that life has not yet bestowed on him, ropes in his older cousin Kevin Thomas (Fahadh Faasil) to snoop on this stranger her son says he loves. Kevin is a tech wiz who has no qualms about hacking. These four people – seen almost entirely on their computer and cellphone screens throughout director Mahesh Narayanan’s CU Soon – set the ball rolling for what turns out to be a clever, astonishingly gripping entertainer.
The text on screen at the start of the film assures the audience that CU Soon was shot adhering to all the COVID-related safety protocols being enforced by the Kerala government during the lockdown. It was inevitable that some smart director somewhere in the world would find a way to shoot a full-fledged feature film while the ongoing coronavirus pandemic keeps humankind confined mostly to our homes. That in India this director has emerged from the Malayalam film industry aka Mollywood is expected, since the past decade has marked a return to a golden era of Malayalam cinema, with directors and writers experimenting with themes, formats and genres like never before.
Narayanan, of course, already had a track record of excellence as an editor before he made his debut as a director with 2017’s indisputably brilliant Take Off starring Parvathy and Kunchacko Boban. It is unsurprising that for a film as cutting-edge as this one – with the story rolling out entirely through the characters’ text exchanges, video conversations and voice messages – Narayanan found a natural partner in Fahadh. The star, who had a significant supporting role in Take Off, has been at the forefront of thematic innovation in recent Malayalam cinema, and is the perfect fit for CU Soon.
Despite the restrictive format, Narayanan’s sure-footed direction and brisk editing combined with his lovely cast’s comfort with the camera makes CU Soon a remarkably pacy thriller and a perfect antidote to the immobility that the pandemic has imposed on us.
CU Soon is streaming on Amazon Prime Video India.
Rating: ***1/2
(Watch this space for a longer version of this review)
from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/2QHAWi6
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