Enakkul Oruvan

Enakkul Oruvan is an avant-garde thriller that is not afraid to tease us with its fractured narrative, a heartfelt tribute to movies, a meditation on our lives and our dreams, and a traditional romantic film. And, if you are the kind of person who is into celebrity trivia, you will also find meta narrative here (a romance between two actors that starts off well and then sours) because the lead is played by Siddharth. This is quite evident in a press meet scene where his character has an outburst after he is grilled on his personal life.

The story revolves around Vicky, an usher in a rundown single screen theatre, who pops a pill that he is told will put him to sleep and make his dreams feel real. Vicky begins to dream that he is a film star, Vignesh. Characters from Vicky's world also find a place in Vignesh's world. Divya, the pizza waitress he loves, becomes Divya, an upcoming model-actress with whom he gets into a relationship. His caring theatre owner Durai becomes Vignesh's trusted manager. Then, there is a loan shark and his men who become gangsters in the dream. The director visually differentiates the two worlds by showing us Vicky's life in colour and Vignesh's in black and white (it's a dream!). There is also a track involving Vignesh in coma and an investigation into his state, which centres around the mystery pill Lucia, which is what Vicky takes! And then, there is a twist in the tale that makes us reevaluate everything that we have seen till then and question what is real and what isn't.

The film is a remake of Pawan Kumar's Kannada film Lucia, a mindtrip of a movie. This film doesn't quite capture that film's ambitiousness and visual pizzazz but still makes for a solid effort, especially for a debut film. The track involving the cops was better integrated into the plot in the original and the performances, especially of the supporting characters, lack the effortlessness of those in the original. You only have to look at John Vijay, who goes over...