Via Da(chilling)

The story begins in Darjeeling with Kay Kay Menon-- husband to a rich and agonizingly shreaky Sonali Kulkarni. The honeymoon is just about to be over when Kay Kay Menon disappears in thin air. Enter Vinay Pathak as inspector Robin Dutt to hatch the case, which finally gives in to a series of narratorial variables by each actor in the drawing room of a plush flat on a rain drenched night. So much so, that the reliability of the stories they concoct is something of a question? This indeed isn’t a soppy storyline but it is no doubt borrowed from films we started watching a decade back.

What happens is Sonali Kulkarni is married to her good-marketing-executive-in-her-father’s-firm husband (Kay Kay Menon). Menon watches a grizzly looking Sourav Ganguly on TV as Kulkarni takes a long shower. She calls out dotingly to her husband when her husband takes a mystery call on the phone and disappears from the hotel. The mysterious foreboding using minute details like Marquez’s novel on the bedside table ‘News of a Kidnapping,’ Kathy Lee’s ‘How to Kill your husband,’ Satyajit Ray’s first color film ‘Kanchenjunga’ and a poster of the movie ‘Confessions’ atop Parveen Dabbas (doing a cameo as the fugitive lover of Kulkarni) strutting a cigarette outside a pub are noticeable.

Rajat Kapoor is believable as a sensationalist who is also a journalist, while Simon Singh (his comely wife) is bearable. Together they give their versions of the murder in Darjeeling and end up revealing their own characters.

Narayanan, who plays the dreamy film student, has layers in his character and it reflects the story he narrates in the drawing room, while Sandhya Mridul an insufferable drunk, hams in with her role of Malvika (the previous wife of Menon). Vinay Pathak (the inspector who would smoke without ever lighting his cigarette) is again worth a watch.

The Kay Kay Menon, I have seen in Hazarone Khwaishein Aisi looks more matured in comparison to the amateurish Ankur Sharma. In fact the scene where he leaves Sonali in a forest to click nature photographs has some oh no moments. He exaggerates his expressions.

Sonali Kulkarni looks okay, but her moans and groans are again a bit over the top. Arindam Sil as the hotel manager is an event in him. The Bengali used in the movie is real.

The storyline is cohesive and works really well as a book. Darjeeling as a location is good for city-weary eyes, but the momentum in the first half goes downhill after intermission. The last scene seems to have gone terribly awry with Kulkarni answering the door with a come hither expression in a satin salwaar kameez, a la Bollywood masala ending. The ensemble cast of matured actors seem to try too hard to act. Otherwise, the banter in the drawing room is easy to gulp down with a can of coke.