Deepti Naval & Kalki Koechlin’s Goldfish Movie Review: Sensitive mother-daughter film on dementia

Language: English

Cast: Deepti Naval, Kalki Koechlin, Bharti Patel, Rajit Kapur

Director: Pushan Kripalani

 Goldfish is much more than a simple mother-daughter story. In a very fluid storytelling format, the maker of Goldfish was able to highlight greys of a mother’s character fearlessly breaking away from the stereotype. The dialogue of Deepti Naval who plays mother to Kalki Koechlin, that will keep hitting you is, “Tea at four’. And you will keep wondering throughout the film as to why does she keep saying that.

Deepti Naval plays the role of Sadhana Tripathi, a veteran Indian classical singer who is suffering from the onset of dementia. And Kalki Koechlin plays her daughter Anamika who too is suffering from the different hurdles of modern day life. Goldfish is a movie which is definitely told from the heart and has been strewn from the directors’ experiences. Mother-daughter relationships are not always great and we all know it.

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From the time of cutting the umbilical cord, to building it up to let going of holding on to the petticoat string of your mother, it is filled with bitter-sweet memories. The film shows the complexities in this so-called pure relationship of mother-daughter.

Well, it is not so pure as we have been always made to believe, and _Goldfish_ brings out the flaws in a beautiful, subtle manner. The narration of the film is so vivid that you start comparing your relationship with your mother. All the characters have a back-story including Sadhana Tripathi’s ( Deepti Naval) friend Lakshmi Natrajan (Bharti Patel) who plays the role of a nurse who wants to go back to the hospital even during the time of pandemic. The love-hate mother-daughter relationship including the emotional distance has been beautifully depicted in the film.

The film shows the constant conflict of practicality vs emotions and old vs new. But at the end emotions win and the old and the new co-exist. The neighbourhood of Britain where Anamika and her mother live has a character of its own and neighbours share a beautiful bond where everybody is there for everybody though there might be several differences.

There is a constant mother-daughter conflict.  Sadhana keeps forgetting a lot of things because her memories are failing and sometimes she spouts out a lot of things which are true and which have actually happened and that’s how Anamika connects the dots and finds answers to many untold secrets of her mother. Full of pensive silences with its bitter past, the movie touches the core of your heart and leaves you thinking. Goldfishes are known to have short memories and that’s where there is a connection with dementia. A must watch film which is not one bit preachy and leaves the audience to decide as to what happens at the end.

Rating: 4 out of 5