Itihri Nerum, which means ‘A Little While’, lingers in one’s memory for more than… well, a little while. It is sharp-witted and, like a lot of Malayalam movies, not afraid of silences. And when the silences do occur, they are suffused with flute passages which float ethereally across the Thiruvananthapuram landscape, conjuring a stirring synthesis of ‘now’ and ‘zen’.
I often wonder how Malayalam cinema conceives the stories and screenplays that it so audaciously does time after time. In Itihri Nerum, the protagonist, Anish (Roshan Mathew, once again proving himself to be one of the most unobtrusively skilled actors of this time), is a podcaster whose marriage has “something missing”.
At least this is what he tells his former girlfriend, Anjana (Zarin Shihab), when she suddenly calls him to announce she is in town, while he is on his way to a stag party in a hotel room with two of his colleagues on the eve of his baby’s baptism. He diverts to the public library to meet her. We never see the library. The budgets, like the emotions in the screenplay, are curbed.
The evening feels like a baptism of some sort for Anish, as he reconnects with Anjana, and then… well, the rest of the film turns out to be as unexpected for us as it does for the characters.
But here is the thing: the understated, subtle yet mordant screenplay (by Vishak Shakti) takes both us and the characters for a rich, rewarding, unforeseen—for-all-concerned ride. This is a tricky terrain, ridden with potholes and U-turns (in a manner of speaking) that could quickly convert the amusing, faintly alarming, dwindled-down drama into a farce.
Debutant director Prasanth Vijay negotiates through the snarls with endearing ease and fluency. Most of the plot is on the road with Aneesh and Anjana occupying the backseat while Aneesh’s colleagues Rajan (Nandhu) and Chanchal (Anand Manmadhan) taking the front seats, not only literally but also in other ways.
Both the ‘supporting’ actors, especially Nandhu, are natural-born scene-stealers. Their characters’ grow from two mildly interested bystanders to genuinely concerned participants in the crisis on hand. The two actors sink their teeth into their respective roles with an unassuming diligence.
The crisis, if you must know, is a sloshy Anjana who drinks the entire evening with Anish, claims she knows how to hold her drink, and then passes out. I really didn’t like Anjana much. She is, in one word, trouble. And also a bit of an intruder. What follows is a night to remember with moments and episodes that stay with us in spite of the narrative’s irksome tendency to straggle when we expect it to trot.
Flaws, which make life worth living, garnish the narrative, reminding us that perfection in human beings is as boring as in cinema. Each of the four protagonists in Itihri Nerum are blemished characters and aware of their shortcomings. Their ride together from Thiruvananthapuram to Kanyakumari through the night is reflective, introspective, and revealing. I won’t say entertaining. For that, we can always turn to the next David Dhawan film.
Watch out for filmmaker Jeo Baby as an autodriver who doesn’t know how to handle the drunken couple in his vehicle. Fortunately, director Prasanth Vijay does.
