Karayilekku Oru Kadal Dooram - struggling to make an impact

Cast: Indrajith, Jagadeesh, Mamtha Mohandas, Dhanya Mary Varghese, Lakshmi Sharma, Sarayu, Geetha Vijayan

Director: Vinod Mankara

Music Director: M Jayachandran

In Karayailekku Oru Kadal Dooram, Indrajith plays Anoop Chandran, a young writer who is torn between a fast crumbling marriage with Meera (Sarayu) on one side, and a rejuvenating relationship with a celebrated dancer Gaadha (Mamta Mohandas) on the other. Memories of his college sweetheart Bhama (Dhanya Mary) continue to haunt him and along with Gaadha, he sets out to find out where she had vanished.

Anoop strikes us an entirely confused man, and the reasons behind his bewilderment would never be known to us. Perhaps it's intended that way, and there is nothing wrong in it either, since there needn't be a rationale behind every act. There is the doctor played by Jagadeesh who suggests something called Temporal lobe epilepsy (or something of the sort), but none of my limited attempts to dig out something from it bore fruit.

The bottom line is that after a while, Gaadha seems to be more obsessed with her lover's past, and with the woman living in it, than Anoop himself. She almost revels in taking up a shovel and digging up heaps of truths that she hopes are lying buried within him. She even travels to Kerala with him, hoping to meet Bhama in person.

The three women characters in the film compete with each other in hollowness. Meera is the typical nagging housewife, who complains that her husbands smells of another woman. She stops only after the proverbial slap in Malayalam films is delivered in tact. Bhama on the other hand roams empty college corridors and sees flashes of a withered romance here and there. And Gaatha busies herself with portraying Hidimbi in her latest dance feat and shops for saris for her lover's wife when she is not hunting around for his lost love.

Bottom Line

==========

Karayilekku Oru Kadal Dooram - struggling to make an impact

The final disclosure that is intended to send shock waves does nothing of the sort, since you are suddenly left with the feeling that these characters truly deserve what they get in the end. The reason behind such an apathetic feeling is indeed the sea; the sea that lies between the film and its viewers stranded on some other shore.