Saturday, May 26, 2012
Love, Wrinkle Free
Go, Goa, Gone
Year ago, there was a charming comedy play (turned into a movie too) called Never Too Late,about what happens when a fifty-something woman finds herself pregnant.
Sandeep Mohan’s Love, Wrinkle Free takes the idea from there, but spins a totally different yarn, adding eccentric characters and crazy subplots. Setting the film in Goa, also allows him to capture the quirky ‘anything goes’ air that is associated with the sunny beach state.
The title appears on the furrowed brow of 46-year-old Annie (Shernaz Patel), taken by surprise by her eight-years-younger husband, Savio’s (Ash Chandler) sudden ardour. That bout ends in an unexpected pregnancy, at a time when their adopted daughter Ruth (Arila Silaichia) is having an identity crisis; Savio is finding the going rough at his job with an underwear company and Annie herself is going through some angst, because even the Church choir wants younger singers.
The characters and their problems are immediately identifiable. But then, the film goes off into many different directions bring the interesting idea crashing down. Most annoying is a gangster (Sohrab Ardeshir), with hair issues, who wants his junkie son (Ashvin Mushran) to produce a kid.
Savio, facing a career crisis, is duped by a smooth talking man into investing in a company to manufacture edible lingerie. The money vanishes, but the conman leaves behind his photographer girlfriend Natalie (Seema Rahmani), whose purpose in the story is a bit hazy. She wants to shoot a calendar with Savio, teaches him yoga, partners him in salsa classes, but otherwise the friendship causes no ripples in their lives.
After a point the aimlessness of the script and the needless focus on characters that have no direct bearing on the travails of Savio and Annie, renders the film boring. And yes, no film about Goa can be complete without a rant about how the place is going to the dogs, and that pops in too.
In a cast of either non-actors or actors who can’t rise above their caricature parts, it’s up to Shernaz Patel to keep things sane, and she does her best. In contrast Ash Chandler wears one expression, like he was hit on the head by an unidentified flying object.
Labels: Cinemaah
