Movie Review: Aamis (Assamese)

Producer- Poonam Deol and Shyam Bora

Director- Bhasker Hazarika

Star Cast- Lima Das, Arghadeep Baruah, Neetali Das and Sagar Saurabh

Genre- Thriller

Rating- ***1/2 (Three and a half)

Unique and Brilliant!

Jyothi Venkatesh

Aamis revolves around the unusual tale of Nirmali, a married pediatrician who is in her late 30’s who is doomed to lead a joyless domestic mundane existence in Guwahati in Assam. When she comes across Sumon, a young PhD student who is researching food habits in North Eastern India, she finds herself drawn slowly towards the young man and steadily to his theory that there is no food that can be considered abnormal in society. The two meet over meals comprising for unusual meats on platonic dates regularly though Suman yearns for physical contact and both develop a strange undefined bond for each other. With time, Nirmali engrosses into the taste of meat and starts getting physical pleasure inside the scent of animal flesh instead of real human touch. And the love story takes an unusual shape and there is an interesting awe inspiring climax when Nirmali’s tastes grow more and more adventurous leading to a dark criminal turn in their relationship.

The story and screenplay by Bhasker Hazarika is simply out of the world and without any kind of vulgarity, Bhasker takes the credit for showing the platonic relationship between Nirmali and Sumon with aesthetic sense. As far as performances go, both Arghadeep Baruah and Lima Das compete with each other in portraying nuanced characters and rise above their roles with effortless ease. It is very difficult to believe that both are actually making their acting debuts but surprise the viewers with their spontaneous and vibrant presence and spread an aura of charm in the unique out of the box narrative.  Though not entrusted with a big role, Neetali Das has a great presence as Nirmali’s friend. Cinematography by Riju Das is exemplary while Gautam Nair provides excellent sound design for the film.

Let me caution the ‘vegetarian’ viewers. Though the narrative starts as a normal soft love story with time the plot takes a weird but interesting turn which is masterly handled by the director. Go see the film which bears a striking resemblance to Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover and have an out of the world experience of a different kind of a unique and brilliant thriller. I was awe-stricken when I got an opportunity to see this movie at the recent MAMI film festival in Mumbai.

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