Solid: Dulquer Salmaan, Aditi Rao Hydari
Director: Brinda
A couple of weeks in the past, I spent a number of hours evaluating about 1500 newbie brief movies for Take Ten. A handful of those movies had scenes of actors — extra like amatuer or non-actors — brushing their tooth in entrance of a mirror. I can inform with absolute confidence that all of their performances felt extra pure and natural than watching Aditi Rao Hydari fake to brush her tooth in Hey Sinamika.
To be honest, although, it’s not simply Aditi, the whole movie is off-key that method. Each body, scene, dialogue, occasion, tune, dance seems like an ungainly efficiency put up for an Instagram viewers, in an effort to stage ‘authenticity.’
Hey Sinamika is the story of Mouna (Aditi Rao Hydari), who’s pissed off by her life together with her husband Yaazhan (Dulquer Salmaan) and desires a break. As an alternative of getting an sincere dialog together with her unemployed, over-talking, mansplaining, always-cooking, however doting husband, she tries to run away to Pondicherry. The devoted husband that he’s, he follows her there. Pushed to a nook, Mouna seeks the assistance of a psychologist-cum-con artist Malarvizhi (Kajal Aggarwal). How Yaazhan stays gullible, Malarvizhi navigates her emotions and Mouna understands real love types the remainder of this visually lovely and conceptually trite movie.
The issues with Hey Sinamika start initially, with Madhan Karky’s superficial writing. For an insufferable period of time, Dulquer as Yaazhan tries very laborious to talk in dangerous Malayalam. The reason for why he does that doesn’t come quickly sufficient. And when Aditi reveals up as Mouna, she behaves like a 2022 model of ha-ha-ha-Haasini, waving her completely curled hair in the midst of a storm — shot in grating slo-mo — saying she’s right here to check “kaatrin mozhi” (the language of wind), uttering inanities about marriage to a person she simply met. Director Brinda instantly breaks right into a tune, fast-forwarding us previous the distress of their courtship. Some prancing spherical for the digital camera and a marriage montage later, we get to the crux of the story. Or can we?
The characters of Hey Sinamika come throughout as caricatures. We by no means perceive them for who they’re, however solely as traits we’d relate to as a result of we’ve met folks in actual life with related behaviour patterns. As an example, we all know that Mouna doesn’t like that Yaazhan talks a lot. However, the movie by no means solutions why that’s. Is that as a result of he doesn’t take heed to her? Or as a result of she doesn’t wish to take heed to him? Why is he unemployed? Then, why does he readily take a job when one is obtainable? Most significantly, why don’t they impart with one another?
Malarvizhi, alternatively, believes males are trash (can we fault her?). However why does she take it out on each man on the earth? Why does she put herself and her skilled integrity at nice danger? To reply this, she is given a hasty backstory. Nevertheless it barely helps her unwavering mission to interrupt meandering males. Additionally, don’t any of those folks have households?
This superficial and contrived remedy extends to the conversations and actions of those characters as properly. What sort of skilled psychologist agrees to seduce a person so her affected person can discover an excuse to divorce him? At an important juncture within the movie, Mouna tells Malarvizhi that Yaazhan is legally her husband and due to this fact falling in love with him is “unlawful.” Through which nation, what world, the place universe? Madhan Karky’s dialogues are so unconsidered that at one level, one character tells the opposite reasonably unprovoked: “Whenever you’re via together with your work, don’t fear. Simply keep it up.”
For a movie offered as a romantic comedy, there’s barely any romance or comedy in Hey Sinamika. The jokes round Yaazhan’s persona land solely sporadically — is it actually so dangerous to be a talker or am I simply projecting? The romance between Mouna and Yaazhan has no chemistry. Dulquer tries, however Aditi seems to be like she’s in bodily ache. In a while, the romance between Malarvizhi and Yaazhan by no means hits the softspot both. We are able to barely inform when she stops conning him and actually falls in love. The lesser stated concerning the camaraderie between Mouna and Malarvizhi, the higher.
This isn’t to say that every one is dangerous. Cinematographer Preetha Jayaraman mounts a good looking canvas. The colors are enticing. She shoots Aditi Rao Hydari with a particular gaze of affection and admiration. Costume designers Archa Mehta (Kajal Aggarwal) and Khushbu Banerjee (Aditi Rao Hydari) put collectively attractive wardrobes, not a tuck misplaced. Dulquer may need executed higher with a hair stylist, however that’s simply me being pedantic.
However, the movie so absorbed by its magnificence that it overengineers every part. In a scene Dulquer smashes a jar on the ground in anger. Within the very subsequent shot, the items of the jar are neatly organized on the ground, as we see him stroll previous. The jarbreak — and the guts break — are shortly aesthetised. In Hey Sinamika, even vulnerability is constrained by notions of visible magnificence.
So, individually, the costume designers, cinematographer, editor, director and so forth. have executed a good job. With out the muse of considerate writing, Hey Sinamika falls and crashes painfully on our heads.
