A few minutes into K.B. Maju’s French Vipalavam, you are hit by a wave of deja vu. It lingers like an annoying fly, allowing awkwardness to creep in at key plot points and trumping everything genuine. You can't help but notice the film's unrestrained admiration for Amen, Lijo Jose Pellissery's much-celebrated rural satire. And the film suffers from the overweening indulgence, never erupting into its full vitality and beauty.
Set in the fictional Kochukadavu, French Viplavam is a hark back to the mid 90s, the time immediately after the arrack ban to be precise. All the drunkards in the village are in varying stages of despair, sulking and looking for possible alternatives. Among them is Sathyan, your routine happy-go-lucky hero and his band of friends. He falls for Meera, the daughter of Sisupalan, an arrack-dealer-turned-temple-committee-president nicknamed ‘Patta’. The film is woven around Sathyan’s attempts to woo his future father-in-law and a bottle of French wine, something that accelerates the mad melee of the narrative.
Forced humour
The director dabbles in black humour, irony, romance and eccentricity in an attempt to churn out something along the lines of Amen or Ee Ma Yau. But, despite its strong rural elements, his Kochukadavu fails to generate that poetic vibes of Kumarankary. There is an overdose of quirky characters, most of them borderline caricatures.
But there is no sensible thread that ties them together, making them more convincing. Yes, there is freshness in treatment and a lot of detailing that make some individual scenes stand out. But when it comes to totality, the effort seems lost in a jumble of segments and forced humour.
Sunny Wayne seems a little confused, mirroring Mohanlal and Suraj Venjaramoodu at times. Chemban Vinod Jose has nothing much to do in an unremarkable outing while Sasi Kalinga and Suresh Thampanoor walk in and out of the frame without making much of an impact.
Pauly Wilson has very limited screen space and Unnimaya Prasad, who plays Patta's wife, is the only one who leaves a lingering impression.
A neat and clutter-free script could have saved the film, but there also you find a too-many-cooks scenario with Anwar Ali, Shajeer Jaleel, R. Jayakumar, and the director sharing the writing credits. French Viplavam is simply an ambitious attempt gone awry.
Navamy Sudhish