Padmini(Malayalam; Netflix)
Rating: ***
Padmini ,a marvel of comic writing, begins with one of the most savagely satirical prologues seen on screen.
It is the wedding night of Rameshan(Kunchacko Boban) and his wife Smrithi. Rameshan shares all his future plans of togetherness with his wife ; she suggests a walk before sex. On the deserted road she bids goodbye to her new husband and drives off in a Premiere Padmini car with her boyfriend.
That may be one happy ending for Smrithi. But it is the beginning of Rameshan’s ordeal as a much-heckled man in his town and in the school where he teaches.
Although the rest of the film is not as brutally humorous as the prologue, it nevertheless never falls short of the comic streak. The writing(Deepa Pradeep) keeps throwing potentially incendiary comic hooks into the plot ensuring that our interest never flags.Sena Hegde directs his actors well, allowing them room to improvise though within limits.
It may not be killingly funny. But you won’t stop being amused by Rameshan’s desperate attempts to find a life partner after the wedding-night scandal, with his friend (Anand Manmadhan, very good) trying his best to remain supportive in what looks like a lost cause.
The funniest character in this comic brook of bubbling laughter is Jayan(Sajin Cherukayil) a mattress manufacturer who woes Sreedevi(Aaprna Balamurali, eminently watchable) with all he has got(much of it toxic).
Sreedevi finally succumbs to Jayan’s insistent attention out of sheer exhaustion. As it is, she is beyond the marriageable age, a fact that her mother keeps reminding her of.
The plot, never short of amusing episodes, heads towards a chaotic epilogue after Rameshan falls in love with a school teacher named , ahem, Padmini. Their happily-ever-after is some distance away, as it is bound to be when your vehicle is an antique car.
Somehow I enjoyed Padmini a lot more than other recent rom-coms like Zara Hatke Zara Bachke and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkar. It is laidback yet droll,indolent yet sparkling in its propensity to remain true to the characters who are all desperate to find love and marriage in one way or another.
Padmini could have done with a more sophisticated tone of storytelling. But that doesn’t diminish the volume of freshness in the plot. The characters are real and quite likeable in spite of their eccentricities. Padmini is not a laugh riot. But it is quite a chuckle-worthy little concoction with the right doses of the comic and the karmic.