Good Night; Good Morning

Rating : 7/10 Release Date : 20th January, 2012 Time : 81 minutes Director : Sudhish Kamath; Writers : Sudhish Kamath & Shilpa Rathnam; Music : Gregory Generet Starring : Manu Narayan, Seema Rahmani, Vasant J Santosham, Raja Sen An unsuccessful pick up attempt in a New York hotel bar. An eight hour layover between flights. Drinks. Some drugs. New Year Eve. And a phone call that lasts through the night. Its witty, its romantic, its poignant, its rambling, its plagued by all the ills of a long mobile phone conversation (loss of signal, battery dying out) and most of all, it’s a very unusual yet plausible situation.

Manu, after being brushed off at a bar, is sufficiently intrigued to give Seema a call. She is in between flights and sufficiently at loose ends (and not sleepy) to be able to respond to such a call without calling the cops. The ensuing exchange extends to all possible topics, including simple ones like ‘whats your name’, ‘what do you do’, ‘what are your favourite fruits’ to more complicated ones like Bollywood, relationship with parents, girls, guys, past affairs and future prospects.

I liked the way the characters were built. Manu’s liking for melons (and face-saving knowledge of all their varieties), his inability to forget his past, his comfort in being a geek. Seema speaks like a lawyer, is aggressive, cant stand Bollywood stereotypes and is very comfortable talking about sex / nudity. In fact, even teases Manu for being unable to.

Both come across as self assured yet vulnerable. Romantic yet pragmatic. Funny yet empathetic. I liked the way Vasant & Raja provide some comic relief. Or some of the ‘imaginary sequences’ provide some relief to the conversation.

Possibly, there is a romantic inside all of us. A rebelliousness against being single. A desire to find ‘the one’. And, of course, the desire to be happy. Good Night, Good Morning, in part, explores all these aspects & desires and does it well. An interesting debut from Sudhish, look forward to more from him.