Director: Srijit Mukherji
Author: Srijit Mukherji
Solid: Anindya Sengupta, Shruti Das, Arjun Chakraborty, Madhurima Basak
Music: Saptak Sanai Das
Streaming on: Hoichoi
X=Prem. What the hell does it imply? The title of Srijit Mukherji’s movie (taken from a well-known Shilajit track) begins making sense when within the pre-interval sequence, the scientist Dr Kaufman (Richard Bhakti Klein) proposes an answer to finish the woes of the movie’s central couple, Khilat (Anindya Sengupta) and Joyee (Shruti Das). This can want some ‘ex’plaining. Khilat and Joyee met in school, fell in love, and their breezy, adventurous romance — from attempting out weed on her terrace below overcast skies, to going skinny-dipping on a whim in a river in Karnataka — makes up a lot of the pre-interval parts and the ‘prem’ within the title. All of which is put to check once they have an accident and he loses all his recollections, together with these of her.
Dr Kaufman is known as after the creator of Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts (2004), Charlie Kaufman. In that movie, the central couple, otherwise, sought the assistance of a physician so as to delete one another’s recollections after their breakup. Impressed by, however not imitating, Everlasting Sunshine, X=Prem is ready in a equally hyper-real world, the place we’ve got reminiscence harvesting as a substitute of erasure. On the darkish net, we’re advised, you discover donors — an engineer with a terminal sickness who could need to cross on his experience; a physician who needs to be an actor and doesn’t need his abilities to go to waste. Within the parlance of the movie’s imagined actuality, they’re referred to as ‘skilled recollections’, simply accessible on the web’s black market. However what of a selected, private reminiscence, like being in love with Joyee?
Mukherji has spoken about his movie taking off from the Kaufman-Michel Gondry basic. What he hasn’t stated is the way it additionally owes one thing to mainstream Hindi romantic melodramas; briefly, how filmi it’s. X=Prem could be a black and white movie with some wonderful Bengali prose, however it’s colored by Hindi cinema. Khilat and Joyee, who’re in all probability Nineties’ children, can’t cease referencing movies by the Khans, together with the trashy Aamir Khan starrer Love, Love, Love. Whereas on a safari, the couple get married in a temple in a jungle — as {couples} are likely to in such movies — and it’s on their approach again that the automobile accident occurs. Rishi Kapoor and Poonam Dhillon met an identical destiny on their approach to get married in a temple in Yeh Vaada Raha (1982) — a movie that additionally, in its personal approach, offers with mind harm and lack of reminiscence in a lover.
The one approach Khilat can get again his recollections of Joyee, Dr Kaufman theorises, is that if they will discover somebody with recollections of getting liked her as deeply as Khilat did. Would that be an ‘ex’ of hers, then? Right here’s the place Mukherji, who has additionally written the movie, betters an already fascinating plot improvement: Joyee has not dated anybody earlier than Khilat, however she did as soon as obtain a love letter and a clean name. Meet the X of the title.
There’s a way of world-building in these segments that reimagines the faculty campus because the birthplace of romances and a human community of knowledge.
Arnab (Arjun Chakraborty) was a senior of Joyee’s in school and his love for Joyee was such a well-kept secret that no person on campus had any clue of its existence. The secretive nature of this one-sided love infuses X=Prem with sudden drama. By revealing him to the viewers, however to not the characters of the movie, Mukherji turns the love story right into a thriller of types. Take into account the absurdity of the state of affairs — a younger couple desperately hopes that the woman had a secret admirer (is he a stalker, a creep?). As Joyee and Khilat flip to their mates and outdated contacts from their college days, Mukherji takes the movie to playful instructions. For instance, they get in contact with the gossip columnist of a now-defunct underground school zine. When that doesn’t work out, they flip to the nice outdated canteen proprietor, who has a god’s eye view of school romances. There are false candidates: somebody who was thought to have emotions for Joyee, it seems, was faking it to make one other lady, now his spouse, really feel jealous.
There’s a way of world-building in these segments that reimagines the faculty campus because the birthplace of romances and a human community of knowledge. The movie additionally displays a great spirited acceptance, even need, of being romantically favored by somebody who is just not your accomplice. It units the stage for the mature relationship drama that X=Prem transforms into within the second half, when Arnab and Aditi (Madhurima Basak) — an unhappily married couple, as incomplete as Khilat and Joyee — enter the equation. Aditi is aware of that her husband remains to be in love with Joyee, however loves him anyway. Once they have intercourse, he thinks of Joyee; after they’re executed, she insists that he discuss it. This co-existence of two people who fetishise one-sided love paints an image of a wedding desperately in want of saving.
Because the movie approaches its climax, it turns into clearer that X=Prem is a mathematical drawback ready to be solved. The movie has a neat construction and as a storyteller, Mukherji is ready to maintain our curiosity for probably the most half. That is probably the most enjoyable the filmmaker has had shortly (and probably the most enjoyable I’ve had watching one directed by him). X=Prem breathes, takes detours, and when the time is correct, modifications tracks. It helps that it doesn’t take itself too significantly. However the cause why it really works, to a big extent, is as a result of it has soul: you take care of the characters. Newcomers Anindya Sengupta and Shruti Das make Khilat and Joyee plausible, and Arjun Chakraborty, forged towards sort, brings a physicality and thriller to Arnab. There’s an general ‘freshness’ within the movie, to which Saptak Sanai Das’s beautiful songs and Shubhankar Bhar’s black and white cinematography contribute.
There’s a stunning addressal of a number of the problematic components constructed into the premise. As an illustration, does Arnab’s ‘pure’ love for Joey represent stalking? Or a extra plot-related logical flaw, that Arnab’s love for Joyee — idealised and one-sided — isn’t fairly the identical as Khilat’s, who’ll need to cope with a extra actual model of her. (Within the scene through which the 2 {couples} lastly meet and speak, Arnab, additionally a poet, describes his reminiscence as “laathkhorer smriti”, an oddly stunning phrase). A reminiscence switch of that kind may result in critical issues, and that is the place X=Prem fumbles in its handy, underwhelming ultimate scene. It’s a missed alternative. The place Mukherji goes for a mathematical decision, a bit ambiguity might need helped.