‘Elumale’ Movie Review: A Terrific Thriller That Demands Your Attention

Every small detail in Punit Rangaswamy’s Elumale is choreographed delicately with intent. The blood smear on a car following a tiny roadkill is wiped off with water after some deliberation. Still, it returns to haunt the life of Harisha (Raanna), a man running against the clock to reunite with his lover, Revathi (Priyanka Achar). A coin offered to a local deity turns out to be more precious than ₹100 notes when all a man has is a payphone next to him, and he will give up anything to make a call. A car misses going past a crucial security barricade by minutes because of a detour — a detour that unintentionally upends its driver's entire life.

The razor-sharp Kannada film is filled with numerous coincidences and instances of the butterfly effect — but every twist of fate is mindfully placed to make all the parts in this romantic thriller come to life.

Raanna in 'Elumale'

Harisha and Revathi aren’t unlike the couples we’ve seen on screen. They are sweet and informed, with a sort of inherent niceness that fuels their bond, and one that occasionally, but unwittingly, gets them into trouble. The star-crossed lovers couldn’t be more different from one another. Revathi is Tamil and hails from a wealthy, large family in Salem, while Harisha is a Kannadiga and is an orphaned taxi driver from Mysore. Like any ‘rich girl meets poor boy’ love story, the lovers' fate is star-crossed and begins with an ominous tone. Revathi is hastily decked up for a sudden marriage when her family finds out about her non-Tamil lover. So, she obviously runs away, a day before the wedding. Harisha, on the other hand, hurriedly makes his way to Mysore, yearning to reunite with his runaway bride. But if literature is any evidence, it is that nothing comes easy in such stories, and Elumale is no different.

But the way Elumale handles these timeworn conflicts makes all the difference. Theirs is a relationship that is already established when we see them. For a film that hardly has the couple in the same shot — their romance is woven around incessant phone calls and daydreaming — their love is easy. This ease is written in the dialogues (Revathi gently compares Harish’s liberal love for her to her family’s dominating love in a dialogue to Nagabharana’s constable), the way the film is tenderly cut in portions of romance (a shot of her looking out the bus window is skilfully cut with a shot of him outdoors, beaming at the possibility of ending the day by meeting her, the transition almost making it seem like they are together), and in particular, the mise en scène (even before the couple meets, their analogue phones — a big part of their 2k romance — meet; the phones are placed next to each other in a scene in the police station). 

Like the romance, every emotion in the film is mindfully folded into the screenplay. In what would’ve otherwise been a tedious task to balance, Elumale carefully stacks various narrative elements on the Jenga-like plot, piece by piece — a terror attack is lurking, a notorious moustachioed forest bandit is on the loose, and a custodial death is covered up. Even if the film sometimes finds itself in a precarious spot, the gingerly laid-out Jenga tower never once topples. Composer Imman and DOP Advaitha Gurumurthy amp up the accompanying tension with precision.

Raanna and Kishore in 'Elumale'

Underneath layers of all the romance and action, Elumale is also a story about the kindness of the human heart. Even when Revathi is unnerved by her own situation, she goes out of her way to flag a public danger. An ageing constable, who has everything to lose, takes a chance on young love, and a dubious cop finds the last ounce of decency in his body to do one nice thing for the man he wronged. Raanna and Priyanka Achar are terrific as the couple who aren’t just running against time, but almost bending it to rewrite their fate. Actors Kishore and Jagapathi Babu play important moving pieces in this hyperlink film, making their characters count.

Elumale is such a breath of fresh air in a genre that often uses intercaste love to tell stories of bloodshed and brutality. It is a film that demands your attention.