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Around 20 minutes into Kolamavu Kokila, there’s a passing shot of the three women of the house, sitting in line, combing each other’s hair. It’s a visual that’s been repeated so many times in our films that we’re likely to not notice it; but not when it’s in this film. The mother has just been diagnosed with cancer, leaving her with just three months to live and even fewer days with a full head of hair. And so, even this most mundane daily activity, becomes striking, forcing one to sit up and take notice. This is one of the dozen such moments that make Kolamavu Kokila a special film;and it’s not the least because it’s ‘female centric’ film.
Kokila (Nayanthara, now deserving of early morning shows and pal abishekams) isn’t the result of a script re-write to force-fit a gangster film for a powerful heroine. It’s very much an organic film which achieves its own mass moments without its female lead ever having to imitate excessive displays of machismo. Much of that is because it is a very human story.
Kolamavu Kokila Genre: Dark comedy
Director: Nelson
Cast: Nayanthara, Yogi Babu, Saranya Ponvannan
Storyline: The elder daughter of a family turns to crime to save her mother from dying
Drug smuggling is something Kokila is forced to take up once she is told of her mother’s cancer and has no other way to earn the Rs.15 lakh it would cost for her treatment. And like Walter White of Breaking Bad, what we’re witnessing is the dark turn a normal person’s life takes when put in the toughest of times. Yet what sets it apart is how the film treats even the darkest situations with humour. There’s a hilarious five-minute stretch, which is essentially one long rape joke, where the entire family gets together to kill one gangster after another. What’s disappointing is what happens between such terrific scenes. It feels like a lot of time has been spent to set up one great scene, which is again followed with periods of dullness. It also doesn’t help how things get a bit too convoluted, like it so often does in films about drugs and smuggling.
Even so, it’s still one of the better films we’ve seen this year and a departure from the sermons that have come to be defined as feminist films. Kolamavu Kokila is quirky, ridiculous and fun and we can’t wait for what the lady superstar has to offer next.
Nayanthara, Yogi BabuNelson DilipkumarAfter playing an upright Indian Administrative Officer on the right side of law in 2017 film Aramm, Nayanthara flips on to the other side in her latest dark adventure, Nelson Dilipkumar's Kolamavu Kokila. As innocent sounding as the title itself may be – kolamavu in Tamil means rice-powder used to draw alpana/rangoli – Nayanthara's Kokila appears naive and even a wee bit muddleheaded till her mother's (Saranya Ponvannan) potentially fatal lung cancer drives the girl to plunge into a drug cartel.It is not that she connives and cons right from the start, but as luck would have it, she finds herself pushed into the seedy business after she had knocked all doors for money to treat her mother. A chance encounter with a drug operative, who uses the guileless, almost schoolgirl-like Kokila to get a packet of cocaine from the toilet of a women's hostel. And she walks through the police cordon in a breeze.Yes, the film has far too many convenient junctures – call them sheer coincidence – for the script to get top billing. But if one were to overlook these, and Yogi Babu's (who sets up shop right outside's Kokila's) desperate affection for Kokila, which turns sillier by the minute, Dilipkumar's work stays on course without distraction.A black comedy into which not just Kokila, but also her ATM guard father, her sick mother and college-going sister get sucked into, the movie manages to lighten the journey of a motley crowd, which includes good cops, bad cops, drugs dons in Chennai and their menacing boss in Mumbai.Somewhat poorly paced and lacking any penetrating dark humour, Kolamavu Kokila manages to engage without throwing up too much blood and gore. Nayanthara carries the plot with conviction. She could have added a few variations to her docile demeanour though.(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator, movie critic)
Director: Nelson
Cast: Nayanthara, Yogi Babu, Saranya Ponvannan
The archetypal premise of Kolamavu Kokila, directed by Nelson, is at least as old as K Balachander’s Arangetram (possibly even older): a woman from a respectable family is in need of money, which leads her into a disreputable profession. It was sex work there; here, it’s smuggling drugs. But the happy twist is that Kolamavu Kokila is no weepie, and neither is it, thankfully, a heart-in-the-right-place empowerment drama. (These seem to be the only two flavours of heroine-oriented films, though the fact that a heroine has been asked to carry a “nice girls usually don’t do things like this” narrative is certainly its own kind of empowerment.) I would have enjoyed it more if Kokila (Nayanthara) weren’t presented as such a wide-eyed victim, had she learnt to enjoy the headiness that comes from breaking the law, but… baby steps, baby steps!
There’s a lot to cheer in Kolamavu Kokila. As in Aramm, there’s no hero — instead, we get Yogi Babu as Sekar, a provisions shop owner who carries a torch for Kokila and gets a fun music video set to Anirudh’s super-catchy Kalyana vayasu. Frankly speaking, this is a looksist conceit that wants us to laugh at the mere fact that a guy who looks like Yogi Babu can dream of getting a girl who looks like Nayanthara. (Yogi Babu is a terrific comedian, and it would be a shame if he became the Usilai Mani of this generation, used for the same “joke” over and over.) But on the other hand, this, again, points to Nayanthara’s adventurousness in picking parts. I don’t see too many top heroines, today, saying yes to films where the answer to the “Who is your co-star?” question is “Yogi Babu!”
Why, then, does the film sound better than it plays out? For one, the director can’t make up his mind about the tone. The events (and Anirudh’s wacky score) suggest a black comedy. The staging and pacing (and Sivakumar Vijayan’s studied camerawork, with neon colours and skewed angles) suggest a mood piece, a drama. Many gags are present on paper but they don’t build. When a cop stumbles on Kokila’s tiffin box stuffed with cocaine, or when Kokila’s family outwits a gang in a gruesome manner, there’s no zip. Or maybe we could say that the extreme stylisation chokes the film and zaps it of energy. The screenplay looks like it needed a few more drafts. A cop played by Saravanan comes and goes. Kokila’s family is too colourless, little more than “dad”, “mom” and “younger sister.” Black comedies thrive on eccentric behaviour, and this family is too straight.
As is Nayanthara, who plays Kokila as a timid, halting creature, and maintains this single note throughout. Yes, the key to her character is her “appavi moonji” as someone puts it, her innocent face, but it’s hard to read her. When she asks for someone to be shot, or when she engineers a double cross, you don’t know what’s going on in that head. Is it fear? Or cunning? But the supporting cast — each character nuttier than the next — saves the movie. Mottai Rajendran plays a smuggler with a fondness for circuitous sayings. We get an idiot gangster who likes ice cream. (The scene where he leads Kokila to his boss is a scream.) Yogi Babu and a sidekick (who’s in love with Kokila’s sister) get their moments, especially after they board the van with a ginormous consignment of drugs.
Also Read: Did Not Modify Script For Nayanthara: Director Nelson On Kolamavu Kokila
Best of all, Saranya, who I feared was being cast in the “Saranya role” yet again, gets to kick ass. This is so unexpected that I laughed as much at what she does as the fact the she’s the one doing it. This, then, is another triumph: the reversal of what we find in hero-oriented movie, where all the women (girlfriend, mother, sister) are stock characters whose only job is to revolve around the hero. In Kolamavu Kokila, the women do everything, from cooking to killing. The men are either useless (like Kokila’s father, played by RS Shivaji), or clowns, or cops and gangsters who are outwitted a tad too easily. The suspense factor is criminally low and this film could have been so much more, but it’s so different in so many ways that I’m just glad it exists.
Kolamaavu Kokila movie review: Nayanthara is riveting as a drug peddler in a film laced with dark humour
3/5
Kolamaavu Kokila aka Coco is an out and out Nayanthara film laced with black comedy. Director Nelson has made a bold script-driven female-centric film which, at the same time, is within the confines of the brand of Nayanthara, the ‘Lady Superstar’. The leading lady and all the women characters here do things differently from mainstream films and their actions are justified, owing to the circumstances in the plot.
Kokila (Nayanthara) is a shy and timid lower middle class girl, who at the same time, is street smart. She, in a way, is the sole bread winner in her family, consisting of her dad (RS Sivaji), a security guard at an ATM, her college-going sister and her loving mother (Saranya Ponvannan), who runs the family with an iron hand. Kokila’s introduction scene spells out her character. She works as a salesgirl in an electronic shop and is not happy with the salary rise offered by her supervisor. The guy hints that if he is made 'happy', he will recommend her name to the general manager. Her retort is simple, "Why should I make you 'happy', when I can go straight to the GM and make him ‘happy’?"
She walks out of her job and against the wishes of her father and joins a massage parlour as a receptionist. One day, she is shocked to know that her mother is suffering from lung cancer and the family needs Rs 15 lakhs for her treatment. She approaches relatives, NGO and others including a rich old man, who wants her to be his 'keep' (paramour) and also provide her a bungalow. Meanwhile, in a mix-up, she meets an influential drug lord. As she is pushed against the wall trying to meet her mother’s medical bills, she decides to become a Kolamavu (Tamil slang for cocaine) peddler.
Nobody, including a prying cop (Saravanan), will ever suspect the beautiful and coy Kokila to be a drug peddler. And Kokila uses her demure nature to win over people and then get her job done without losing her dignity. In a crucial interval block scene, the stammering and frightened girl smartly turns the tables on the deadly drug leaders by making the boss shoot his own men.
Director Nelson subtly conveys the message that women empowerment is the way to take on the male-dominated society. All the male characters are shown as either wimps, or trying to entice or romance women, including the chief comedian (Yogi Babu). Even Guru, the cop who is after the gang, is controlled by his wife.
The film belongs to Nayanthara. She is riveting in a totally deglamourised role. Her introduction and the interval block scene will make you clap out loud. Saranya Ponvannan, in a change from her usual docile mother stereotype, is good, while Yogi Babu, the comedian, lightens up the screen as a man smitten by the heroine. Motta Rajendran, the other comedian, is predictable and in-your-face. The films works largely because of Anirudh’s jazzy music and background score, which fits into the plot, along with the camera work of Sivakumar Vijayan.
There are Breaking Bad influences throughout the film. The drawbacks are there in plenty. After a racy first half, the pace slackens in the second half, along with some logical loopholes in the plot. However, at the end of the day, it is a Nayanthara show and she shines bright once again.
Updated Date: Aug 18, 2018 09:50 AM
