By R Gautum

Someone enters your life, makes deep connections, and then just like that, disappears. There is intrigue when that someone is projected as a conman.

But is there closure for those affected by that person’s intrusion?

No.

And that makes Dear Friend, the new film by actor-director Vineeth Kumar in Malayalam, a desirous watch.

It is not a pretentious film.

And to state that is important because the new wave of Malayalam cinema thrives on being pretentious, being politically right, being woke.

Dear Friend has none of that baggage. It is straight-laced in its approach but extremely layered in its storytelling.

That is why it evokes the artistic sensibilities of Padmarajan films. His films were direct yet multi-layered.

People now mock him for projecting upper-caste biases but what the heck, he told the story as is, as was, and as now.

Vineeth Kumar attempts precisely that — not being drawn into what the film should be but what his story is.

It is not an easy task.

In a world where being ‘right’ means playing to the ‘liberal’ gallery, Dear Friend tells a story without frills.

The pace of the film is leisurely — which in common parlance may translate to being a ‘lag’.

But within that unperturbed pace, Vineeth packs so much of emotional subtexts that you are sucked into the psyche of the characters than their ‘stories’ — as we are typically used to.

Which is why Shyam and Amutha, the seemingly peripheral characters in the film become so much important to the narrative.

And it is a casting coup to have roped in Arjun Radhakrishan, who plays Shyam with such understated brilliance that he traverses the emotional highs and lows with elegant gravitas.

So it is with Sanchana Natarajan, whose body language speaks volumes.

Check this scene out: Amutha professes her love for Vinod, he plays it down, and she is perturbed. And in that moment, with a shake of her head, a motion of her hand, she just accepts the reality — and is ready to move on.

More than the response of Vinod (Tovino Thomas) to that scene it is how Sanchana carries it that makes it stand out — and brings out the ‘thought’ ’in the filmmaking of Vineeth Kumar.

There is a certain goofiness and yet a sense of melancholy that Tovino brings to Vinod, making it one of his fine portrayals.

That is not to negate or dumb down the characters who get more screen space —Jannath (Darshana Rajendran), Arjun (Arjun Lal, also credited with the story and script) or Sajith (Basil Joseph).

Arjun Radhakrishnan

Arjun, Jannath and Sajith are set in their emotional moorings: Arjun is just another of us, playing it safe but ready to step up when the situation warrants; Jannath is that shoulder you may want to cry on, and Sajith is the ubiquitous moaner — someone burdened by family and his woes are purely financial.

But there is so much more unintentional layering to Shyam and Amutha — and their portrayal by the actors are spot on. Shyam, at some level, reminds you of Babu, the rich hooligan of Thoovanathumbikal, ready to do anything for friends.

Dear Friend has a placid pace before it gets into what we conventionally call the ‘thriller’ territory. We expect Vinod to be an ace conman. But what if he isn’t? What is the Vinod that all his friends try to discover is not the man he is?

Dear Friend ends with an open note. There is no closure.

The only closure comes to Sajth, if you may, because he now has a job and can meet to his family’s needs.

For Shyam, Vinod has led to nothing but a colossal failure of his dreams — to be independent; and for Jannath and Arjun, Vinod means loss of trust. (And it is delightful to watch Arjun evolve from that child artist in Thanmathra to being so much self-assured).

Maybe, someday, Vinod might come back into their lives. If not for anyone else, he owes it to Shyam.

Dear Friend is layered storytelling. It is about life as we do not see it on screen. It leaves you unpatronised.

That is saying quite a lot in today’s spoon-fed cinema era.

The film is set in Bangalore but it could work anywhere — making this tale of friendship pan-humanity.

Watch Dear Friend on Netflix.