Laptop Review

My Mother's Laptop has an emotionally charged narrative that tells a haunting tale of a mother and her son entrapped in a swamp of passion and emotions from which there is no return. A mournful meditation on lost innocence, it assumes an elegiac tone to emerge a compelling film of the first order. Ravi (Suresh Gopi) returns home after thirty long years, to find that his mother (Shwetha Menon) had slipped into a coma some time back. Splashing about in a whirlpool of guilt and remorse at having deserted her, Ravi flits intermittently across time lines and longs feverishly for a love that had once been his life. As his girlfriend Payal (Padmapriya) draws closer for comfort, Ravi realizes with a shudder that his mother is the only woman he could possibly love. Ravi might essentially come across as a highly dejected single man in his 40's, and yet there are several veiled layers of complexity in his persona that are unearthed as the film goes on. This is a man without a past, or a present or a future for that matter. Life is a striking still picture for him, and he badly wants it to remain that way. Time equates to a figure that he single-mindedly adores and the clocks have stopped ticking the moment he had to move away from her. The color modes are clear-cut. Ravi moves about in inert shades of cobalt and blue with golden brown memories looming large over his head. Those are auburn days that he holds on to dearly, when the whole world looked a tad worth living. An intentional attempt to set apart the time frames is quite evident. It's fascinating though, that the more the two are drawn apart, the more they fuse together as a whole; their margins dissolve with a vengeance. There is a momentous frame when the camera, having scanned the deadness of the mother's eyes for a few moments, gently shifts down the arm onto her open palm, where Ravi presses down a fading flower from the past and resignedly buries his face over it. The tears that streak down his cheeks are evocative of a fierce fragrance that he had once known and as he caresses her fragile fingers with his lips, his expression is nothing short of orgasmic. This is perhaps a pivotal moment around which the rest of the film swings back and forth. A lot of heavy silence in the film has been put to brilliant use. There are scenes galore that competently juxtapose the boy with the man; both of them devastatingly left alone with the sea. They meet up just once, amidst a congregation of brightly lit candles to take in the truth. It's a captivating instant when words suddenly appear irrelevant. The sexual implications that lie scattered across the entire length of the film are subdued, suggestive and quite refined. Caught in a self-exploratory frame of mind before the mirror, there is the mother who playfully implores her son to help her pull the sari straight. When he darts out into the front yard impishly pulling it off her hips, before rushing back to the protective warmth of her breasts, there's a tinge of eroticism writ large, that subtly mixes up a lot of loud laughter with hardcore passion. There's plenty of sexual imagery at work as well. I wouldn't dare think of another actor as Ravi; this is a career-best performance from Suresh Gopi that I would gauge as lying far ahead than that as Perumalayan. Vulnerability isn't a trait that one generally associates with the hefty actor, and yet here the breakdown that comes about through his desolate eyes is absolute. Ravi's anguish and guilt on several occasions gives way to a despair and a listlessness that the actor proficiently captures with ease. There is an exactness in his stupendous performance that would be much talked about in days to come. Personal liberation acquires persuasive forms through Shwetha Menon; it's a superlative acting job, arresting those diverse moods of tenderness, compassion and adoration so vibrantly. Almost everything about her is subtle and poignant, as she puts on show a multidimensional and brightly textured exploration of love and sexuality. With a couple of masterful performances as these, the film is likely to spawn as many discussions about acting as about the topic at hand.Laptop is never for a moment judgmental or apologetic; it doesn't ever gawk cross-eyed on its lead characters. It's an astoundingly powerful debut film from Rupesh Paul, that's vividly caught on film, terrifically acted and profoundly heartfelt. Resolutely rooted in its own convictions, it's a raw and refreshing movie that's blatantly honest and downright human.