Month of Madhu Review

What would an NRI teenager be doing talking to a 40-year-old alcoholic man in the middle of the night in a dark corner of a Vizag beach?

In Srikanth Nagothi's Month Of Madhu, two strangers meet at turning points in their lives and strike up a friendship of sorts. Madhusudhan (Naveen Chandra) and Madhumathi (Shreya Navile) come from different worlds, yet they both harbour a profound sense of alienation. Madhumathi is an easy-going, extroverted girl from America, constantly at odds with her overbearing mother who tries to force her to "behave". She feels like an outcast by her family that judges her for her freewheeling personality, her size, her smoking habit and her casual flirtations with boys. Madhusudhan, on the other hand, is so uncommunicative, emotionally unavailable and erratic that his wife of 20 years, Lekha, files for divorce on these grounds.

Nagothi's conversation-driven drama intricately explores these characters' relationships and inner lives. The outlines of the two Madhus are familiar to us: Madhumathi is an "American-Born Confused Desi, and Madhusudhan is a repressed middle-aged Indian man. "In America, everything thinks of me as Indian; in India, everything thinks of me as an American," Madhumathi laments, succinctly summing up the Indian immigrant experience of isolation. Madhusudhan is equally at the margins of society - jobless and cast away by his friends, he is estranged not just from his wife but from the world. A chance meeting of these two wayward souls gently nudges them down a path of discovery, closure and redemption.

Nagothi gives the space and time - a vast playground - for his superbly-designed characters to interact with each other. Take the drunken conversations Madhusudhan has with his best friend Bhushan. While Bhushan gossips, talks in circles and relives memories of a better past, Madhu sits, zoned-out. It is clear that nothing uplifting will ever come out of these chats. In contrast, when Madhu meets Madhumathi, she straps an Apple Watch to his wrist and has him do breathing exercises. He is amused at first, but the novelty of this experience marks the first crack in his closed-off persona. Madhu, this stranger from another land, shakes him loose in a way that a best friend never could have.

Srikanth's eye for nuance is most evident in the character of Lekha, Madhu's wife of 20 years. Flashbacks of the once-happy lovers accentuate the extent to which their marriage has broken down. Madhu is now perpetually drunk, and Lekha moves through her life in a zombie-like manner. Her decision to leave a man she once loved more than herself - a man who has neither abused nor cheated on her, but one she can no longer reconcile with - is painfully evident on her forlorn face.

With Lekha and Madhu's undoing as the focal point of the film, however, Madhumathi's character gets shortchanged. Nagothi endows her with a believable, full-bodied personality, but she never quite gets the satisfying arc that Madhu and Lekha do.

Naveen Chandra puts on a harrowing performance as the mercurial Madhusudhan. Much is expressed through his sunken eyes, his haggard look and his refusal to make eye contact. The list of actors who possess the ability to hold so many emotions behind their eyes is short indeed, but Naveen is a true talent. He masterfully shows vulnerability, sadness, anger and isolation all together in this heart-wrenching role.

Swathi gives a breakthrough performance as Lekha. It is a marvellous showcase of her acting range. In the flashbacks we see the playful Swathi of the "Colours" fame, the girl with the toothy smile and the flirty eyes. In the present, we see the sadness behind her eyes and her defeated posture - the physical toll that the 20-year mistake has had on Lekha.

Shreya expertly balances Madhumathi's playful and forceful sides. Everything about her from her accent to her clothes screams "misfit", so that her isolation is immediately obvious. Manjula Ghattamaneni who plays Madhumathi's mother belies her poor acting skills, but it fits with her character of a snooty foreign aunt.

Anchu Rajamani's music and the sound design do much to establish Nagothi's characters and their inner worlds. Each Madhu gets an anthem of sorts, a rap song that is a call for help.

Month Of Madhu is far more honest storytelling than anything I've seen all year. Its refusal to water down its script to meet commercial interests is not just bold but inspiring. It remains to be seen whether a large enough subset of Telugu audiences will embrace such stories, but in my mind, Nagothi is already a winner, and his movie is on my top recommendations for the year.