‘Awake’ movie review: A freeze-frame shot

It’s like a group of friends huddled together to make a film. A certain ease and sense of comfort reaches out from the very first sequence of Atul Mongia’s short Awake which is available free on Mami Year Round Programme Home Theatre from May 9 to 16, 2020.

Sameera (Ishika Mohan Motwane, a photographer in real life) is shooting a couple (Chaitanya Hegde and Ruchi Narain). There is the familiar chatter, conversations about fitness routines and kalari that you would well have had with your own friends. There is an air of spontaneity and it’s evident that every spoken word here, and in other exchanges, wouldn’t possibly have been scripted in stone.

Things seem normal and familiar in the routine till Sameera goes back home to cuddle up with her husband Vikram (Yudhishtir Urs) to sleep. A man who is there by her side, yet not quite. Their relationship is like a still-life artwork or rather a freeze-frame shot, if one were to use a term from photography itself. There are memories of the past, when things were kinetic instead of being static. A friend from the past Nikhil (Nicholas Brown) is knocking on the door again and another dear friend Maggie (Reshmy Kurien) wants her to let go, move on from the stasis and start afresh.

Ishika Mohan Motwane proves that she is as good in front of the camera as she is behind it. There may be the obvious comfort of being in a ‘home production’ but that can’t discount the fact that there are moments when she is wonderfully expressive and fluid in conveying a deeper vulnerability, despite the seeming normalcy. Her character appears to have mastered the conflict between inner desires and an outward control. But has she? Will she get accustomed to the wall she has built around herself or will she cave in to her emotions? The film offers no answer. It’s all about a woman and her strange equation with her husband that is still in progress. We can only guess.

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