Awake movie review: A stealing still of desires

What: A short story on relationship

AWAKE movie review

Atul Mongia’s easy going 23 min story of a photographer Sameera (Ishika Mohan Motwane) and her struggles with her desires, dreams and reality is told through her cryptic relationship with her husband Vikram (Yudhishtir Urs). The approach is casual and the movie begins with a photo shoot where Sameera is enjoying her routine with her clients - Chaitanya Hegde and Ruchi Narain).

An observation told through simile where the character Vikram (Yudhishtir Urs) becomes a prop. The experiment works for most of the time and the writer director Atul Mongia smartly uses images to create the atmosphere and feel.

It seems to be a normal conversation between Sameera and her clients, things take mysteriously metamorphic turns when Sameera is shown performing her mundane duties as a housewife and attending her husband Vikram who is on a wheel chair and cannot speak or move.

Atul Mongia uses the disease of Vikram as a metaphor in depicting the routine/boredom in the life of Sameera and many other coupes like her.

A comment on relationship, commitment that has fallen prey to the set norms.

Sameera a photographer whose pictures fill life in the life of her clients in an unfortunate twist of fate finds her life tied, freezed in a frame which she cannot discard.

Sameera copes with her reality as pleasant memories from past haunt her present. Sameera is haunted by the times spend with Vikram when things where cheerful and the return of her old buddy Nikhil (Nicholas Brown ) which tempts her vulnerability. On the other hand her pals Maggie (Reshmy Kurian) and Suhas (Suhaas Ahuja) have advised her to movie on.

Sameera is now a prisoner of her desires and duties/responsibility in which she has found herself ‘framed’.

Performance

Ishika Mohan Motwane is natural while the others - Yudhishtir Urs, Nicholas Brown, Reshmy Kurien and Suhaas Ahuja do chip in with adequate support.

Bottom Line

Atul Mongia’s AWAKE has an open ending –some may call it as a beginning, while some may end up guessing and searching for a clue or say ‘framed’ may be. In certain relationship gets very difficult to draw a line on what is love and what you call as control.