Family relationships have always been central in Indian movies and daily soaps. No matter the language or genre, you will find family dynamics affecting the characters far more than Western counterparts. Here, romance would be less about the two people falling in love than the family they are marrying into. Even action blockbusters with explosive song-and-dance numbers are not free from the traditionalist trap of family values. Parental guilt has been a major part of these melodramas, often expressed in a cloying display of emotion. Ananyabrata Chakravorty’s mystery thriller, “Kaisi Ye Paheli,” is no exception. However, his approach differs significantly from the unspoken industry norms.
Chakravorty doesn’t demand your attention through long-winded, redundant monologues that convey nothing substantial in terms of emotional depth or empathy, but are still present since theatricality draws eyeballs. Instead, the drama is subdued and considerably naturalistic. So, the characters seem far more human through a script that eschews overt sentimentality and presents a balanced parent-child dynamic, where heated debates and emotional outbursts feel as organic and plausible as its otherwise subdued drama.
The unmelodramatic approach also helps “Kaisi Ye Paheli” to stand apart from conventional genre fares. Although it’s a mystery thriller, the script doesn’t rely on heightened suspense-building, which is often considered the end-all and be-all in these projects. The writing and direction remain faithful to the nature of its hill-town setting, where at least a thin layer of fog obfuscates one’s perception of their immediate reality. The characters remain so lost in the maze of an investigation, theorizing along multiple creative lines while oblivious to what’s right in front of them. The interactions, too, are rarely heated unless the situation demands that.
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The film, first and foremost, is a mystery about an incident that shocks a hill town in northeastern India. It unfolds through the eyes of four characters. Three of them are from law enforcement, while one is the mother of one of those officers. She becomes part of this investigation because of the sleuthing skills she built over the years through her fascination with detective stories.
That fascination once led to a family tragedy, which then caused a rift between her (Sadhana Singh) and her son, Uttam (Sukant Goel). The script implies their interpersonal friction from the very beginning, but never exploits it. It shows the cracks in their relationship through microaggressions or silences, intentional or unintentional.
The investigation offers them a way to bond, but one is more invested in a fruitful outcome than the other. Uttam seethes with pent-up resentment toward his mother and expresses it by disrespecting her whenever he gets the chance. Even then, she keeps trying to bridge the gap between them while holding on to the wisdom in solving investigative puzzles. The detective tale doubles as their bonding exercise, in which both sides have a fundamentally different understanding of what’s fractured. Uttam doesn’t want to keep entertaining his mother’s interest, but she can’t help but sink deeper into it.
Through her, we also meet someone whose boredom leads them to a heightened interest in blood-soaked criminal stories and an acute awareness of motives and the potential chain of events. The script unwittingly underlines a recent surge in true-crime fascination, where an idle mind becomes the devil’s workshop. In the same vein, she figures out connections between suspects that others miss and finds clues that slip through their radar. The script cleverly weaves her involvement in the investigation into a family drama, thus revealing layers of their vexations while staying within the scope of its mystery.
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Despite the genre label, the film is more about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the investigation than ‘what’. The revelation/s become only a cherry on top of an exciting web of motives and procedural beats. Chakravorty unpacks those beats mainly through discussions between the mother and the officers, who bring their unique perspectives based on their hierarchical positions. It makes the film more wordy, with theories taking up more space than outcomes.
Yet, while an intellectually rewarding exercise, it gets too caught up in debates or presenting those debates and falls short in terms of emotional resonance. While the arguments do address the systemic issues, they make it difficult to remain invested in the characters’ pathos, which is crucial in moments of payoff directly connected to our emotional investment in their lives beyond the puzzle. In moments when it switches to exploring familial tensions, it remains uneven. Some of these moments give us a sense of their personhood, while others feel almost like exposition dumps. Emotionally, the film works because of Goel and Singh’s toned-down performances as well as Chittaranjan Giri’s.
Although a clever film that draws on the miserable state of the world, it is a tad underwhelming affair, diluting its soul through its insistence on revealing the anatomy.
