Thrissivaperur Kliptham is a throwback movie - both in content and quality, to the times when Malayalam cinema was ebbing on clarity and character. Set in the cultural capital of Kerala, this is many shades different from what we saw in the endearing Pranjiettan and the Saint or Jomonte Suvisheshangal.
The movie is a return of everything a movie-buff would have wanted to duck. Well, there are two tall and well-built men in a tug-of-war they've carried forward from school when one meddled with the other's love. There is sex, alcohol and poop jokes, and an item-number that can send Bollywood babes spinning.
The story begins at David's (Chemban Vinod) home, when his engagement breaks off after a 'gift' sent to him by his 'friends' lands him in trouble at the altar. From that moment on David sets out on a chase to get even with his schoolmate Joy, who 'sent' him the gift. Then it is a maze of character introductions and thereafter, a free-ride on the many 'truths' of 'mankind'.
The Thrissur slang is all over, but except in the beginning when the aerial view of the town and its beautiful roundabouts are shown, the frame is occupied by small-town rivalry, shady lodges, pimps, prostitutes, gambling and glamorous hotspot fantasies on whom a townful of men are ready to shower money.
Voyeurism is in full bloom and our protagonists, old and young, are still fond of binocular-aided entertainment on bathing ghats. There is also the 'idyllic' trap to a rival policeman whose sex videos literally land him in water.
The debut show by Ratheish Kumar, which also features Zareena Wahab as Chemban's sporty mother, is a 'round-about' of many things we wished mature movies grew out of. It is a world of mundu-clad machos, their money and all the 'things' they can buy with it. The lectures on the great virtues of human desire and the matters of morality and perversion need more hard work.
What this movie gives is a familiar package of public face-offs, chases and sexual fantasies, threaded in a disconnected narration. The craft and technique leave much wanting and the truncated articulation and characters in a cocktail drunk and puked over and over are what we get.
While Chemban Vinod does a good job with some seriously good screen presence, Baburaj as Joy and a couple of other characters carry it well through the show. Aparna survived to keep the promise she has been showing but Asif, Zareena and many more could have been tapped into for more punch.
No great luck for women characters, both glamorous and otherwise, except in a final twist, which adds to the befogged moral dilemma of desire that the movie spent half its run exploring.
The end made sense, delicate calculations go wrong, especially when mismanaged.
Rating: 2.5 / 5
