Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Action
Year: 2023
Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes
Director: Pushan Kripalani
Cast: Deepti Naval, Kalki Koechlin, Rajit Kapoor
Kid rating: PG
Goldfish is about a mother and daughter. The daughter is an independent adult who comes back home to London when her mother’s condition (dementia) worsens and she cannot take care of herself anymore. Suppressed emotion and guilt is dredged up, leading to a predictable end.
The film starts from the point when Anamika (Kalki) comes home. Although the mom, Sadhana (Deepti Naval) and daughter are courteous it is obvious that there are unfriendly undercurrents. The women are at odds; one is unwell and resistant, and the other duty-bound to take care of her. Between them, anger simmers.
Bollywood films swim with emotional melodrama, thick, treacly globs of anger, betrayal and guilt. Normally I could do with less, but with this film, I’d rather have had a little more. The emotional drama is obvious but understated.
I did feel for both the mother and daughter – so there the film succeeds. Director Pushan Kripalani manages to make us empathize with each of the women. They have different viewpoints, each valid in their own right. As they stay together while Anamika figures out the lay of the land, they skirmish, voicing out their anger in fits and bursts. Anamika can’t forget the painful memories of childhood. And Sadhana might have never wanted motherhood in the first place.
It is a pleasure to see Deepti Naval on screen again, doing what she does best. Kalki Koechlin too is good as Anamika. Rajit Kapoor play the neighborhood grocer and the Sadhana’s reclusive admirer.
But even with these fine actors, the film had a stilted quality about it, halting, awkward silences and music-less passages of time. A background score might have helped.
This was a good film. Not quite the wondrous, luminous movie I was expecting with that star cast, but still pretty watchable.
Kidwise: Adult themes.
