Phillauri: A laboured fantasy

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Phillauri: A laboured fantasy

Phillauri is a wasted opportunity for compelling cinema lost in a weak screenplay, writes Deepa Gauri

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Published: Fri 24 Mar 2017, 1:06 PM

Last updated: Fri 24 Mar 2017, 3:14 PM

If you have watched some of the videos that come out of The Viral Factory, you would have realized by now how young talents are pushing the boundaries.
While often crass and loud, these videos pack in so much humour and creativity that Bollywood should liberally borrow, if they do not want to end up making films such as Phillauri, the home-production of Anushka Sharma.
Phillauri makes for tiresome viewing - and that, despite its plot with tremendous potential. The film drags, takes sluggishness to the next level, and makes you wonder if this was more self-indulgence than serious filmmaking.
The trouble rests in its screenplay, which while attempting to be 'real,' stretches situations to ridiculous limits. Scenes are clumsily dragged without offering anything of substance, and the tendency to 'spoon-feed' the audience becomes irritating.
And all these struggles were simply unnecessary. Phillauri has a beautiful thread of a movie; it has a strong mise en scène, it has great actors and yet it fails to engage because everything is forced.
So we have Kanan (Suraj Sharma), the cool dude from Canada, who has arrived home to marry his childhood sweetheart Anu (Mehreen Pirzada). However, he must first marry a tree if he must ward of any future misfortunes; the reluctant boy relents but in the process he is stuck with Shashi (Anushka Sharma), the spirit that lived in the tree.
Anushka Sharma's 'ghost' can lift a bed and seep through doors alright, but it is tame, timid and extremely confused. Nothing wrong there; after all, she has arrived into the world of alcoholic grandmothers and deejays a good century late.
Her bewilderment mirrors on Kanan too, and the boy makes a fool of himself while Anu starts wondering if he was up to some affair behind her back. While leaving the protagonists hanging, the film gets into a narrative to-and-fro into Shashi's love life in pre-independence era, with Phillauri (Diljit Dosanjh), the poet-singer.
Picture the possibilities that the story holds: You have two extremes of romance, two extremes of lifestyle, two extremes of societal concerns - and you even have a friendly ghost and the chance to pan superstitions and make a statement on the environment.
But unsure of its identity - of being a comedy, a romance or even a searing tragedy of unfulfilled love - the narrative meanders much like the ghost of Shashi, simmering in her dress, but pretty much non-existent.
Phillauri then could have been redeemed by performances; in her home production, Anushka Sharma delivers what she is bound to but there is no energy or conviction. Diljit Dosanjh, a fantastic actor, too fails to impress simply because the distractions to his character-sketch are too much.
Suraj Sharma should have been the loveable dude but his confusion, which he presents with effortless ease, keeps his character far from engaging.
Phillauri attempts too many things in too little space, and whatever space it had - our 140 minutes - it simply takes for granted with an evident lack of tight clipping and smart story-telling.
Directed by Anshai Lal
Starring: Anushka Sharma, Suraj Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh and Mehreen Pirzada
Now playing at theatres in the UAE
Rating: 2/5


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