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.
