REVIEW: PONDICHERRY (Marathi)

Producers-Akshay Bardapurkar, Sachin Kundalkar and Neil Patel

Director-Sachin Kundalkar

Star Cast- Sai Tamhankar, Amruta Khanvilkar, Vaibhav Tatwawadi, Neena Kilkarni, Mahesh Manjrekar and Tanmay Kulkarni

Genre- Love Story

Platform of Release-Theatrical

Rating-***1/2

Heart-warming and Enchanting!

Jyothi Venkatesh

Pondicherry is a cute little intense love story which revolves around Nikita (Sai Tamhankar) who sets out to run a homestay in the picturesque city of Pondicherry and hosts Rohan (Vaibhav Tatwawadi) as a guest.

While even as Rohan tries to charm and befriend her, he has other intentions behind his actions. Things start turning topsy turvy when the cute Manasi (Amruta Khanvilkar) arrives at the home stay with her boyfriend.

It is interesting to note that this is the first ever Marathi and one of the first Indian feature films to be shot entirely on a smartphone.

Through the maverick filmmaker Sachin Kundalkar’s vision and Milind Jog’s (smartphone) camerawork, you get to see a feast of performances from stalwarts like Sai Tamhankar and Amruta Khanvilkar and of course Vaibhav Tatwawadi and the child actor the cool Tanmay Kulkani in pivotal roles which at once capture your hearts.

The film predominantly revolves around Nikita (Sai Tamhankar), her son Ishaan (Tanmay Kulkarni) and their life. Rohan (Vaibhav Tatwawadi) arrives at the homestay as her guest and gradually not only befriends Nikita and earns the trust of Ishaan as well, you wonder whether he is a genuine guy, and whether he has a sinister motive to befriend Nikita, when Manasi enters with her boyfriend and the this leads to a turmoil of sorts in their lives.

While Sai delivers a fantastic and layered performance as a woman torn between responsibility and acceptance and steals the show in her author backed role, Vaibhav delivers a nuanced performance that has shades of grey, but isn’t hateable and endears himself to the viewers of all ages with his demeanour.

It is Amruta Khanvilkar, who proves to be a surprise package, with her brief but interesting role and does complete justice to it.

However, the one actor who completely ensnares the viewers with his nuanced performance is none other than Tanmay, the child actor.

While Mahesh Manjrekar’s role can easily be dispensed with, Neena Kulkani delivers a fine performance as Sai’s middle class Pune based mother

To put it in a nutshell, I’d say that the film Pondicherry by itself is a master class in visuals, thanks to Jog’s cinematography, the narrative is about three incomplete people finding the missing piece of their puzzle unknowingly. The city happens to be the reason for them to meet.

Shooting with a smartphone has its own drawbacks, not just for the people behind the lens, but the actors as well.

Sachin Kundalkar deserves kudos for truly making a universal film which is not only heart-warming and enchanting with a lot of human ethos and that too in Tamil, Marathi, English and French, on a new location hitherto not captured in films in Marathi. Wow!