CinemaSerf

“Uma” (Radhika Apte) lives in a small tin box of an home with her new husband “Gopal” (Ashok Pathan). She hasn’t a clue how to cook their food and neither seem to have much appetite to consummate their nuptials, so the relationship is distant and she has a bit of a temper which the rather subdued gent tends to run away from (and drink). Luckily, she manages to befriend her neighbour “Sheetah” (Chhaya Kadam) and they share stories about how useless men are whilst she struggles with the boredom of life. She eventually decides to get a job as a cleaner which breaks up the inanity a little, but she also starts to find herself drawn more and more to the animal kingdom. A passing encounter with a goat, then a bird, starts to see her question her almost vampiric behaviour. When an even more curiously tragic incident occurs, the story becomes increasingly surreal and the lines between truth and fiction become almost macabrely blurred. Apte is quite entertaining here as her aggressive and slightly stand-offish character becomes more eccentrically engaging and Pathak also delivers quite well as the hapless husband, but I found the story all too weak and repetitive for too long before the last ten minutes or so finally raise some more interesting aspects of superstition, perhaps even witchcraft, and shines a light a little on the vagaries of her tight knit community who are quick to make snap judgements. Though it’s not graphic, it’s not for the squeamish and it’s those few scenes where most of the dark comedy kicks in, but again there weren’t really enough of them to sustain this. It has it’s moments and is worth a watch for “Uma” wandering lonely as a goatherd through the city beating a mop and pail, but it will look just as good on the telly.