Finding Fantasy

Finding Fanny is an English language film, and I am always suspicious and wary of such endeavors where characters speak ‘well-written’ English dialogue.  The dialogues always try to be natural, but unless actors are adept enough, the movie becomes a tedious watch. I am sure more than half the scripts of Bollywood are written originally in English, and then translated to Hindi. Few of them like Delhi Belly and now Finding Fanny manage to come out in their original intended form, but still I always prefer the Hindi.

The reason of my prologue is that the enjoyment of this film depends highly on how much of an ear and liking you have for these ‘natural’ English conversations. Fortunately we have actors like Pankaj Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia who just knock it out of the park, language not-withstanding. But on the other side we have Deepika Padukone, who feels like is reading rehearsed lines. Of course, her physical presence alone in a scene can have you rapt in attention, but hearing her talk was one of the most tedious part of the film.

Enough of the surface, lets get into what this film is trying to be and where it ends up. The story is set in Goa and has a bunch of oddball characters, which are grappling with reality and pursuing an elusive fantasy. Ferdi(NS) receives a undelivered letter that he had sent to his lover proposing her for marriage 46 years back. Feeling frustrated and excited at the same time thinking that he was not really rejected - as the letter never reached Fanny, he sets the story in motion when he shares this with Angie(DP) .She coaxes him to finally go looking out for Fanny and telling her what remained unsaid for so many years.  This leads to a road trip that turns into a melting pot where raw emotions surface, tempers rise and finally couple of outbursts later everybody gets a reality check.

The structure of the film is quite standard. But there are couple of threads which are delightful. Especially the artist-muse relationship between Don Pedro(PK) and Rosie(DK). It starts as a very comic and awkward dynamic, progressing into something very cynical and unusual. The muse, for the most of the part, is very nonchalant towards the artist’s advances, but she is left zonked and almost devastated at the end. Ferdi’s pursuit of a romantic fantasy is apparently a contrast to the Don Pedro’s pursuit of physical beauty, but eventually it melts down to the same superficial nature of a fantasy, where nothing can really trump physical beauty. And this climactic moment is handled very lovingly. The harsh reality check is delivered with such dry humor, that Ferdi is left devastated and at the same time freed of his flights of fantasy. Mr. Adajania displays a genuine good-heartedness in handling this, because its never easy to squash your character’s fantasy and at the same time empathize with him.

Mr. Adajania himself displays pursuit of physical beauty when he more often than not punctuates scenes with a shot of Angie’s back.  This male-gaze never really adds to the bigger picture, and so does the whole Savio(AK)-Angie love angle. It becomes a very jarring and confused (maybe that’s the point) side thread. It does give a wonderful gender role reversal scene where Angie after making love to Savio, just lays there staring at the sky reveling in the moment not wanting to be disturbed by Savio. It has that traditional male trait of finding nothing more than self-fulfillment in sex. But the heightened self-awareness displayed there by Angie’s character almost robs the moment of its potency.

This whole gender role-reversal (or maybe the new urban gender role structure) is a continuing theme carried by Deepika Padukone (or the directors who have always viewed DP as the new-age urban woman in control) right from her Karthik Calling Karthik days.  She is kinda typecast but she emanates a very genuine vibe which gives a distinct personality to all her characters, always different but still always the same. Come to think of it, the Savio-Angie love story is nothing but a more pleasing playing out of Ferdi’s incomplete love story. But it is mostly ineffective due to sketchy characterizations and a generic back-story.

The music of the film deserves special mention, and I’m not talking about the hindi language songs, but the wonderful English-Spanish (whatever that was) songs which fill Ferdi’s fantasies. They do more justice to the milieu than the hindi songs. 

Finding Fanny, finally is a middling effort, but still has quite a few memorable comedic moments that stay with you maybe not for its humor, but its darkness. 

PS: Cocktail should be moved from Mr. Adajania’s to Mr. Ali’s fimography. Finding Fanny sits as a more apt follow up to Being Cyrus rather than Cocktail.