Charlie (India 2015, Malayalam)

Charlie has been designated a ‘superhit’ by Indian commentators – an indication that its reception by audiences and critics should lead to success after its launch on Christmas Eve in Kerala and January 8th in the UK. That sounds an obvious point to make but the Indian convention of designating films in this way is unusual and not necessarily based on ‘real’ box office figures. I can only give a limited response since, despite assurances by the distributor, the film was not subtitled at Cineworld in Bradford. Fortunately, the outline narrative is straightforward. ‘Tessa’ (Pravathy) is a young graphic designer who arrives home for her brother’s engagement party to discover her mother plotting to arrange her daughter’s (i.e. her) marriage. Tessa escapes to Kochi (Cochin) where she finds a flat in an old house. It is filled with an amazing array of art objects and clutter and eventually Tessa finds a draft of a graphic novel (pictures only) which seems to tell the story of a magical ‘do gooder’ character. We see the ‘real’ events featuring ‘Charlie’ (Dulquer Salmaan) as Tessa reads the draft. Tessa will then seek out Charlie, not finding him until the end of the narrative, but having learned to love him through the stories that she discovers from the other people whose lives have been affected by Charlie.

Without the dialogue, there is always the music and action to enjoy, the local ‘colour’ and beautiful landscapes and in this instance the costumes – bohemian and hippie, drawing on the Malabar Coast’s tourist history perhaps. Kerala is certainly in my top 3 most beautiful places in the world and the film spends plenty of time in Kochi’s ‘old town’ and then up in the mountains in Munnar (with the tea plantations). I understand that some of the scenes on the sands were shot in Gujarat. The narrative is also careful to honour the three religions of the state so there are scenes with Christian, Muslim and Hindu festivals. The film is suffused with ‘magical’ elements. Charlie performs magic tricks and CGI features heavily in some of the music scenes. But there are also terrific scenes shot to capture the crowds, especially in the closing festival sequence in which, as the title at the beginning of the film informed us, “no elephants were harmed”. The song clip below accompanies a montage in which Parvathy’s character begins to enjoy the strange room she has rented.

I can’t comment on the romance (or the numerous sub-plots) without some knowledge of the dialogue, but I enjoyed all the performances. It was good to see Dulquer Salmaan again after OK Kanmani and Parvathy was equally impressive. She is another Southern actor who is more ‘real’ (i.e. less fantasy) than many Bollywood stars. Her personality shines through. Again, unlike some Bollywood films, Charlie takes place in a recognisable India. However, the narrative does focus on some of the more touristy spots in Kerala – which has its big, modern cities just like other leading states. Although definitely a romance, the film does include some fight scenes and dramatic moments – not everything Charlie does has a positive outcome, even if his intentions are good. For a more informed view of the film, look at this English language review from Australia. The blogger either knows Malayalam or she has actually seen the subtitled version.

At Bradford Cineworld last night you could choose between 2 Hindi films, 2 Malayalam films and one Pakistani film in Urdu. Often there is a Tamil film too (it was Pongal last weekend and several Tamil films were released in the UK). We have a local Malayali community in the Bradford district and they occupied the back rows of the cinema (I was on my own nearer the screen). The Malayalam screenings are a relatively recent development in Bradford cinemas, I think. I had a similar experience with How Old Are You? in 2014 but that was a different distributor – and a different kind of film. The website of PJ Entertainments, distributors of Charlie, seems to suggest that they were active in the UK from 2010 until 2014 but returned in January 2016 with a new slate of releases. They need to sort out their operation quickly. When I asked why the film wasn’t subtitled (the film’s credits even list the person responsible for the English subtitles) the Cineworld duty manager said that they had received the ‘hard drive’ but no subtitle track. I didn’t mention that the projected film had also suffered from vertical thin blue lines running through many scenes – a fault in the DCP I assume. It’s great that distributors release films for diaspora audiences, but they could do much more to attract other audiences and getting subtitling sorted out would certainly help. I won’t be put off. I did enjoy Charlie and I’ll look out for other titles that sound attractive – but having to check with the distributor and the cinema first is a drag. As a personal preference, I rate South Indian films highly and I’d like to see them competing with mainstream Hindi films in the UK. For most of the cinephiles I know, South India with four prolific film industries remains almost unknown and that’s a shame. Charlie director Martin Prakkat has a couple of earlier films that sound interesting.

Here’s the trailer for Charlie: