'Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira' Movie Review: A Perplexing Mix Of Fantastic And Frustrating

In the many interviews leading up to the release of Althaf Salim’s Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira (Who Let The Horse Out), we heard the director describing his film to be in the mould of a Jason Reitman comedy (Juno, Up In The Air) with the kind of neurotic characters you’d find in a Woody Allen movie. But as I grappled to get a hold of the insanely erratic Odum Kuthira… I was strangely reminded of Ari Aster’s Midsommar. Not because there’s anything horrific or gory in the new Fahadh Faasil film, but for the way it messes around with the syntax of a bright and colourful comedy.

Althaf has done this once before in his delightful first film, by offering a ridiculously humorous take on cancer and how it affects a dysfunctional family when the matriarch is diagnosed. In comparison, Odum Kuthira... is a much wilder swing. Not only does he exchange the subtleties of a dark comedy for the overall loudness of an over-the-top, Priyadarshan-like slapstick comedy, but, if anything, the core theme of Odum Kuthira... is just as dark or even darker than his debut.

So, when we meet Aby (Fahadh Faasil) and his dad for the first time (played wonderfully by Lal), it’s right in the middle of a massive wedding celebration. The mood is funny and jubilant and yet a scene later, we see Aby’s dad climbing atop a ladder after happily driving back home mid-function to…commit suicide.

It’s jarring and it makes you feel a new kind of uneasy, but I couldn’t recall a single other movie that begins with these colours, set in such places, inhabited with this sort of people even attempting to find laughter in such morbidity. More than a joke, I looked at this sequence as a signal for the kind of film this will turn out to be. As far-fetched as it sounds, Althaf has made a movie about depression and trauma within the deceptive body of a flippant rom-com.

And this statement isn’t an exaggeration. It’s not just Aby’s dad who is undergoing depression, but also his brother Siby (Vinay Forrt). By peppering Siby’s lines with uncomfortable details, the film lets us slowly gather facts about his life, including how broke he is, his plans to get divorced and the manipulative relationship he shares with his father. Aby too isn’t in the pink of mental health when you notice how he’s coming to terms with a breakup, albeit without fully understanding what he’s going through.

This is not just the case with the film’s men. You realise that Nidhi (Kalyani Priyadarshan) too is trying to grapple with her wounds when she first meets Aby and that’s not too long before we run straight into Revathy (Revathi Pillai), another broken soul trying to deal with loss. It's the sort of movie in which you see as many as four people trying to attempt suicide and yet the film looks like it’s a summer vacation!

It’s also the sort of movie in which Aby’s pillow, when he’s overcoming a year-long stint of coma, looks strikingly similar to the pastel-shaded kurta he wears on the day he was supposed to get married. It’s not about the whys of such creative decisions, as it is about the film chasing the why-nots. And when you see Aby trying to overcome the feeling of witnessing the same lucid dream, night upon night, without finding a way out, we also kinda sorta realise how Aby and Nidhi aren’t just bonded by love… they are bonded by their trauma, too.

A still from 'Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira'

There are passages within Odum Kuthira... in which you’re not prepared for how profound it can be. As we watch the blossoming of an unlikely friendship between Aby and Revathi, we fail to realise how they are not too different from each other. And perhaps in the satisfaction Aby seeks in trying to save Revathi, he probably forgets that he needs to be saved just as much.

Which is probably why Odum Kuthira... is never really a rom-com about Aby trying to win Nidhi back. He’s already kinda sorta won her back, but like us, Aby too seems to be waiting to see why he’s not able to feel all those feelings for Nidhi again. In a peculiar sort of way, the film, with its frantic passing and erratic structure, is about people who’re stuck in one place, unable to move an inch forward. And if I read it right, it urges us to look within ourselves to find joy before trying to look for it elsewhere. As with people who see the same dream repeatedly without being able to find an escape, it’s not so much about making sense as it is about finding peace with the nonsense. So, what if the mangoes in Aby’s dreams are the same shade of the dress we see Nidhi wearing as they rediscover their spark? And why does Aby’s dad always find himself in peculiar places when there’s a bunch of oranges lying around?

It may not be perfect, and the performances of almost the entire cast can get gratingly frustrating at times, yet it’s next to impossible not to get lost in what Odum Kuthira... is trying to say. As with the many Dutch angle shots that make up the length of the film, it’s asking you to twist your neck a little to see if you watch a happy movie — one you’ve seen many times before — but by acknowledging the undercurrents of a Soviet-era tragedy. You may be tempted to distance yourself at several junctures, but I hear that my best friend Gibin Kuriakose finds Odum Kuthira... to be one of his most favourite films movies of the year!