We Love Them Too….. Almost!

Patre Loves Padma Movie Review By Raju Shanbhag

She is a beautiful damsel with flowing hair and an unmistakable twinkle in her eyes. Her smile can lit up thousand candles. She looks like a fitting climax of all the hopes you had for future. But when you approach her, you discover that there is no strength in her body. She might collapse any moment, as the soul inside her had fled away long time ago. Chandrashekhar Shrivastav’s Patre Loves Padma is just like a beautiful girl who attracts you like a magnet; and the film would almost have been a masterpiece if only the story was more believable.

Patre Loves Padma is more like a captivating dream that haunts you in the middle of night, which repeats every night; night after night. Only here, the dream has the magic touch of aesthetically shot scenes. Almost each frame of the film looks like the creations of an artist, who has brought nature alive with his imagination. Chandrashekhar Shrivastav makes full use of his experience as an assistant cameraman as his cinematic sense is showcased in almost every frame of the film. Although his penchant for top angle shots and rotating the camera around the subjects may be a bit too repetitive, these minor mistakes can be pardoned as the film is a visual treat among the films in recent times, at least in Kannada.

So why is Patre Loves Padma not a masterpiece? It’s mainly because of the story, which is a rare, but unfortunately a glaring weak point of the film. It’s about a boy named Patre, who has lost his childhood sweetheart, Padma and the boy is after every girl who is named Padma, just to make sure that he keeps the name of Padma alive in his heart. If this sounds ridiculous to you, that’s because it is. But at the same time, Chandrashekhar Shrivastav depicts this precarious storyline with such aplomb and aestheticism, that it’s hard not to consider him as worthy asset for the Kannada film industry in the coming days.

In spite of breathing a fresh air into the approach and a whole new thought process in the narration, the film chokes at the doors of greatness and the culprits are very well known. With a mystical touch here and a fantasy there, the story could have been comfortably taken from Chandamama comics. Sorry, if the story was symbolic, we didn’t see any signs of that at least!

It’s as if the director was too keen to show the dreamy world of Patre and feelings and he forgot to take care of some pressing facts. For example, the director shows Patre and his friends kicked out of their houses and living in a bus, doing nothing but following every girl by name Padma. But what do they do for a living? From where do they get money to eat and dress? The viewers search for the answers like Patre searches for Padma and both are extremely unsuccessful throughout the film. Chandrashekhar’s sleepwalking through the story reaches new heights in the second half where there is absolutely no rhyme or reason left in the story. Unfortunately, it’s the lack of believability in such scenes that inadvertently alienates the viewer from the characters in the film. For any movie, this could be suicidal.

To add to these woes, even Chandrashekhar’s aestheticism too gets boring with an overdose of top angle shots and slow motion. The friends always run from one place to the other instead of walking and funnily enough, they always stand in exactly the same order on the screen! Mind you, they are always together except for songs and a couple of scenes and this can get really irritating to see all of them in the same order, speaking one after the other throughout the film.

Newcomer Ajith looks handsome and is tailor-made for the Devdas avatar. If he can work on his dialogue delivery a bit more, he can be a good find for Kannada. Of the three leading ladies, the girl who plays the schoolgirl attracts your attention with her naturally innocent expressions. Other two are just about OK.

A special mention about the filming of Hingyake Hingyake song, which showcases the talent of this debutant director in its full glory. Chandrashekhar has selected a dilapidated building to symbolize the melancholy of the song and has come up with a song that will remain in our minds for a long time, may be longer than the film itself. If for nothing else, you can watch Patre Loves Padma just for the way this song has been shot.

On a whole, Patre Loves Padma has a new approach, fantastic cinematography, but a very weak storyline and irritatingly repetitive sequences. But you can definitely give it a try for its eye catching narration and some witty dialogues.