Innale Vare movie review: There’s more to this thriller than appearances suggest 

Language: Malayalam    If _Oruthee_ stood gender-related conventions of the ‘chase scene’ on their head, the new film Innale Vare does the same with the ‘fight scene’. Fisticuffs in films are usually unreal and dealt between men. The rare women who are allowed in are either there to be protected, to be objectified as hotties who fall to a man or, at best, are impossibly strong just like the men they’re combating. An extended war of punches in Innale Vare (Until Yesterday) though, is none of the above: it features a man and a woman tearing into each other, neither is she Wonder Woman nor he Superman, the actors involved and cinematographer Bahul Ramesh make it look completely real, not one extra second gets past Ratheesh Raj’s precision editing, and the conclusion is cent per cent convincing.   That confrontation in Innale Vare bursts onto the screen unexpectedly, and encapsulates the spirit and impact of the film: slowing down occasionally to create an impression that it has nothing more to offer right before its next disclosure, and using offbeat devices to make a point.   [caption id=“attachment_10788771” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Nimisha Sajayan in a still from the film[/caption] Writer-director Jis Joy’s Innale Vare is based on a story by Bobby and Sanjay about a selfish, arrogant movie star called Adhi (Asif Ali) who falls on bad times. We see Adhi cheat on his girlfriends (Reba Monica John and Athulya Chandra), mistreat a producer (Nandu) by refusing to complete a long-pending project and humiliate a businessman who approaches him for an ad campaign. In fact, on his way up the ladder, Adhi has antagonised everyone who loves him, so when he needs them most, he finds that they don’t get worried about his erratic behaviour and words because his past conduct has compelled them to set their expectations low.   Adhi is dealing with a crisis when he walks right into another by taking a lift one day from a stranger (Nimisha Sajayan). What follows is a game of deception and a battle of wits that draws multiple players into the arena including her friend (Antony Varghese), Adhi’s girlfriends, his mother (Sreelakshmi), his manager (Rony David) and an ally in the police force (Irshad). The film is a warning bell against letting success go to your head, laid over a cautionary tale about how technology can be manipulated to ruin lives. I am no tech expert, so I cannot vouch for whether the exact – often amusing – nature of online manoeuvring portrayed in Innale Vare is possible, but I see no reason not to buy into the premise for a fictional saga, especially since new software emerges every minute these days, we know that identity theft is a real danger in today’s world, and though the manoeuvrings in the film sometimes falter, the script has already laid out very valid reasons for why the people in Adhi’s life don’t notice anything suspicious about his telephone calls and social media posts when they should have.  

Innale Vare’s cleverest trick is that in places it makes a concerted effort to lull the viewer into assuming it has played all its aces, although the next one is right up its sleeve.

It also tests the audience by tapping a prevalent social prejudice that women can get away with outright deception because society tends to believe them over paavam men, a prejudice that commercial Malayalam cinema has for long played along with: in one scene, a woman lies through her teeth without batting an eyelid, the desperation of the man she’s lying about made me feel empathy for him in a way I had not experienced earlier in the film…and I found my heart sinking. Did Innale Vare plan to peddle this stereotype? Was it designed as fuel for misogynists who claim that men are always victimised by women and systems especially in cases of violence? But Bobby and Sanjay don’t let us down, and gradually let on that Innale Vare is not pitting men against women at all. Instead the film prods us to remember that our casual actions can have horrible consequences for others and for us, and our amorality could come back to bite us when we are at an all-time low.   [caption id=“attachment_10788801” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A still from Innale Vara[/caption] Asif Ali does the insecure, aggressive egoist well, belying his appearance of innocence. Unlike the policeman he played in last week’s _Kuttavum Shikshayum_ , here he does not permit Adhi’s vulnerability to make him likeable for even a moment, though he does not make himself overtly, caricaturishly repugnant either. He’s a jerk who comes by his just desserts, that’s all.   The one who steals the show in Innale Vare though is Nimisha Sajayan who is simultaneously oily and scared, terrified yet determined. Her character’s ingratiating tone and expressions in her introductory scene are everything every creepy, clingy, pushy fan has ever been. In the scenes that follow, she is greatly enabled by the camerawork that almost seems to mock her and her mincing, uncertain steps.     That said, you can’t cast Antony Varghese from _Angamaly Diaries_ in your film and expect to get away with  giving him such an under-explored role. Revise that: this person is a major participant in the proceedings, so irrespective of who was playing him, you should have known you cannot get away with writing him inadequately. The superficial characterisation of this individual causes the narrative to sometimes flatten out when he appears in Innale Vare.   Also, while the film moves along at a pace that leaves little spare time to question the methods employed by Adhi’s adversaries, certain improbabilities just cannot be ignored. Not only does a major star take a video call at a crowded party, the caller, unmindful of where he is, reveals personal information in that mode. And while I could buy into the techniques used to access his intimate communications, I couldn’t figure out how his social circle was so easily accessed. There is also a passage in which Adhi’s enemies jointly expose themselves to a person other than Adhi, which seems like an uncharacteristic instance of throwing caution to the winds. Nevertheless, I found myself consistently engaged with Innale Vare’s take on karma and vendetta, its refusal to paint anyone in shades of saintliness or undiluted evil, and the puzzle of whether non-actors pretending to be who they are not in the story would trump an actual actor. Jis Joy’s filmography so far has been dominated by feel-good flicks about human goodness and hope , but Innale Vare stays determinedly within grey territory. The film is not constructed as a pacey, edge-of-the-seat thriller, but instead one that appears more straightforward than it actually is and is less focused on suspense than it is on the human condition. Rating: 3.25 (out of 5 stars)  Innale Vare is streaming on SonyLIV

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial