Film Review | Finding
Fanny
A still from Finding Fanny'.
The despair of its maladjusted characters
balanced neatly with their laugh-inducing eccentricities.
Once upon a time in India, in a little Goan village called Pocolim,
there lived an old man bent over and choked up over the loss of his one
true love, Stephanie Fernandes. Freddie had once poured out his heart to
Fanny, as he called her, in a letter but he never got a reply. Then one
day, 46 years later, an envelope as brown as the colour of cold tea lay
under his door. It was the same billet doux, but it had never reached
Fanny.
With the help of his neighbour, Angie, Freddie decided to find
out what had become of Fanny.
Angie, bless her kind soul, knock-out looks, and casual-chic clothing,
brought along travelling companions. One of them was her mother-in-law
Rosie, the village busybody with a size 20 bottom and a delightful
collection of floral frilly dresses and shoes in permanent danger of
losing their stilettos. They needed a car, so local artist Don Pedro,
who went into raptures at the mere sight of Rosie's derriere, loaned his
vintage vehicle. The vehicle needed a driver, so Savio, the brooding
childhood friend whom Angie might have married if she hadn't nodded her
head in the direction of Rosie's son (who choked on the cake on his
wedding day, poor thing), came along for the ride.
Also in the car was Rosie's cat, Nareus. Why? Just, but also because the
feline provides the first of many indications that life is incredibly
sweet, often silly, and endlessly entertaining, but also sometimes
bitter.
Not that there are too many dark linings in Homi Adajania's sunny and
incredibly funny yarn. Equal parts screwball comedy and road movie,
Finding Fanny is Adajania's third feature and his second collaboration
with Kersi Khambatta. His estimable debut, Being Cyrus, written along
with Khambatta, was set in his own Parsi community. The despair of its
maladjusted characters balanced neatly with their laugh-inducing
eccentricities. Each Hominoid had an ingrown toe nail, and it showed.
Adajania's second movie was the misfire, Cocktail, and although he did
little to address the contrivances and conservatism of Imtiaz Ali's
screenplay, he gave Cocktail's lead, Deepika Padukone, the opportunity
to reinvent her screen image. With Finding Fanny, Adajania returns to
assembling a barmy army and gently chucking tricks and twists at them
that they are not quite trained for. The residents of Pocolim are going
nowhere in a hurry. Angie (Padukone) and Rosie (Dimple Kapadia) are
unmerry widows, Don Pedro (Pankaj Kapur) is deluded, Freddie
(Naseeruddin Shah) is lost, Savio (Arjun Kapoor) is frustrated, and even
the priest (Anand Tiwari) looks like he would rather be on the beach.
There's at least one redundant Russian.
Don Pedro is the only one vaguely approaching unsavouriness, but he has
one of the movie's best lines, when he describes Freddie as the
"Casanova of the Konkan".
The real dark cloud, who eclipses the rest of the cast, including a
surprisingly charming Arjun Kapoor, is Dimple Kapadia's Rosie. Kapadia
started her career playing stereotyped Catholic girl Bobby Braganza, and
went on to appear in roles that demanded nothing more of her than a
toss of her magnificent mane and a flash of her almond eyes. Adajania
recognised that beneath Kapadia's distracting appearance lay a volcano
of anxieties and tics. She was shrill and crotchety in Being Cyrus, and
in Finding Fanny, she is desperate, fragile, funny, wise, and the most
rounded person in a movie whose characters freeze halfway into creation.
Savio is the other interesting lost soul in a journey to possibly
nowhere. Arjun Kapoor has tended to spit out his lines in his Hindi
movies, but he is far more at ease with the colonial tongue. Savio is a
good-natured hunk who is fool enough to be put in his place in a
hilarious post-coital conversation that shows the easy-going Angie's
tough side.
Angie, Pocolim's resident angel, symbolises the film's preference for
fun over wisdom. The idea of Pocolim as a beauty spot that can also be a
scar doesn't figure in the conversation. If there is any sadness at
being stuck in a nowhere"and admittedly gorgeous"place, it is tucked
away as safely as Angie's virtue. Every time a moment suggests that the
Funny Five will take a troublesome detour, the movie pulls back
hurriedly to the middle, as if afraid of what might be revealed. Kapadia
has a great scene of hope turning to cruelty with Kapur's Picasso-esque
painter that ends just when it starts to get interesting. So it is with
the rest of this movie, which is superb at verbalising the nuttiness of
its characters through offhand remarks, non sequiturs, and pointless
debates but not as committed to teasing out their underlying motivations
and troubles.
It's a they-are-crazy-but-not-dangerous giggle-fest, with as many
repeat-worthy jokes in Goan English as there are cashew trees in the
state. (The movie is also out in a Hindi dubbed version, the very idea
of which is hard to digest.) Since this is also India's European corner,
the sun-blessed land of laidback, where time can stretch onto eternity
or to the 105-minute duration of this movie, Finding Fanny never dares
to disappoint. Pocolim, evocatively described as a "a puppet show as
large as a village", is caught in the kind of picturesque and photogenic
time warp that makes location scouts and real estate agent salivate. It
has been shot with appropriate prettiness at its lush best by Anil
Mehta and beautifully designed by Manisha Khandelwal, so it's all good.
Finding Fanny releases in theatres on Friday
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