Amit V. Masurkar’s Sulemani Keeda is possibly Hindi cinema’s first and assuredly intelligent urban slacker comedy. Set in Andheri, a Mumbai suburb where many aspiring film writers, actors and directors live and work, usually after migrating from other cities and towns, the film is true and sympathetic to the milieu. The dominant strain in the writing is dark humour—a pet cat snorts cocaine and drops dead on a fish bowl.
The film mocks the self-serious writer’s pursuit of a break in the film industry and the delusional and bogus inheritors of Bollywood aristocracy, and cautious friends and lovers in the making overwhelmed by the big city’s randomness. But neither the director’s point of view, nor the humour in his writing, is crude or simplistic.
Mainak (Mayank Tewari) and Dulal (Naveen Kasturia) are roommates and writing partners who believe their script “Sulemani Keeda” will revolutionize Hindi films. Mainak is brashly cynical; Dulal has firmly retained his poetic bone. They spend time at book stores and house parties. Their attempts at hitting on girls end when Dulal finds Ruma (Aditi Vasudev), a lawyer and aspiring photographer. Their creative limbo also seems to end when they meet the drug-addled, whimsical son of a film producer who wants to make a risqué film, a “Tarkovsky with orgies”.
Filmed guerrilla-style in real locations across Andheri and Versova, and evidently made without too many resources or much technical finesse, Sulemani Keeda has a madcap sparkle to it. The no-frills living rooms and the real, populated streets of Mumbai in which the film unfolds add to the naturalistic vibe, and Tewari, Vasudev and Kasturia deliver performances befitting it.
Sulemani Keeda is a triumphant independent project. Masurkar entertains with nothing but a story and a milieu he knows really well.
Sulemani Keeda will release in theatres on 5 December.
