Sundari Gardens tries too hard to make all the right noises

How I wish I liked Sundari Gardens (Malayalam) a little more. It has all the ingredients of a terrific romcom , most of all a heroine who is as delectably imperfect, flawed and capable of serious mischief as Reese Witherspoon in _Legally Blonde_ . Sundari, aka Suma, is a divorcee and a cancer survivor who lives with her mother and works as librarian in the local school in an idyllic verdant town in Kerala. As played by Aparna Balamurali , Suma comes across as self-consciously relatable. She drinks, she swears, she roughs up a boy who has impregnated a student, and when the man she likes (some years her junior) seems to be slipping out of her hands, she doesn’t hesitate in playing dirty to get him back.

All this is just fine as the topic for a thesis on ‘The Changing Face Of the Bharatiya Nari In Cinema’. But as flesh-and-blood, the character falls short of breath. Suma is too bookish in her feminist characterization. She hits all the right rebellious buttons. But she never seems real in spite of making all the realistic moves. Rather, Suma is like a textbook representation of Feisty Feminist Womanhood. To her credit Aparna Balamurali makes every effort to brush away the excessive strokes of emotional aggression in her character, the over-punctuation almost makes Suma seem like a comic-book sketch. Balamurali has some sturdy support in Neeraj Madhav who plays the supporting role of Victor, much in the way that the actors in Hindi cinema do for Taapsee Pannu . Madhav’s is a tricky role, as he has to play along with Suma’s oddities and yet strikes cautionary notes when she trips over. To our relief, the male protagonist’s personality doesn’t seem like an over-leaden comic-book entity. It baffles me as to why Suma has to be so many things at the same time. Divorcee, I understand as it adds shades of challenge to her romantic feelings. But why a cancer survivor? What purpose does that serve? That she is a fighter is established from the outset. We got that. There was no need to rub it in. Sundari Gardens is well-meaning, and it is shot with a keen eye for greenery by Swaroop Philip, the only technician who treats the film with the specialness that it aspires to but never quite achieves. Partly it is to blame for its own shortcomings. Writer-director Charlie Davis ’ protagonist is ultimately a self-congratulatory creation. I remember Satyajit Ray saying that he wrote Charulata as a woman who dares to break her marriage vows as Ray wished to appear fashionably progressive. Suma, no Charulata for sure, seems to be written to flatter the writer-director. She makes all the right moves but never achieves the effortless fluidity of a natural dancer. The moves are correct. But the steps seem over-rehearsed. The script falters at key points. In the beginning, a distressed student moans that she is pregnant. But a few minutes later it is revealed she is not. So what’s the problem there? At the end when Victor wants to renew their relationship, Suma’s answer is, “Hang around. See how it goes.” And we thought she was on the road to repentance. She also reveals at the end that she plays the cello like Katrina Kaif in Subhash Ghai’s Yuvvraaj . This woman seems to give a new dimension to multitasking. But her penchant for being so many things at the same time doesn’t make her unique. It just makes her seem not up to the task of being what she is so desperately trying to be. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.