Mili, Review: Chilly

A remake it is. And an ideal vehicle to draw boundless sympathy from audiences for the lead actress, Janhvi Kapoor. For who would not root for a girl locked in a freezer chamber and subjected to temperatures of -12 degrees to -18 degrees Celsius? What if hypothermia sets in, and she freezes to death? No chance. Mili is producer Boney Kapoor’s mini Titanic tale, minus the boy, and killing her would be like committing suicide. So, once the premise of a girl battling sub-zero temperatures is established, the further developments do not hold much novelty. To compensate for that, there is an extraneous plot woven in, involving the search for Mili, and associated sub-plots, which are not up to the mark. Although we see Mili in various stages of injury and despair, all we hear are mere grunts, in typical style. Once the major shiver down your spine has run its course, the minor ones do not match up, being predictable, and expected. The film needed some more twists and turns to keep the audience rivetted.

A B.Sc. in nursing, Mili Naudiyal lives with her father, who is a semi-retired insurance salesman. He is a compulsive smoker, and she tries time and again to get him to give up, but he remains recalcitrant. She is also the apple of the eye for Mohan Chachu and Devki Negi, their neighbours. The family is not doing well financially, so Mili also works at Doon’s (the locale is DehraDun) restaurant, a fast food joint. Besides, she also plans to go to Canada, where nurses get a much higher salary than in India. This upsets Sameer, her boy-friend, who does not want to be left behind alone. Partly on the rebound, he finds a job in Delhi and is planning to go there in a few days. Mili has so far hidden her affair from her father, because Sameer does not have a job, but plans to tell him as soon as he starts working. On her mobile phone, Sameer’s number is saved as Sameera (the female equivalent of Sameer), to avoid detection by her father.

After celebrating his job contract with a few drinks, Sameer picks up Mili on his two-wheeler and is taking her home, when they are accosted by policemen. Firstly, they are fined for not wearing helmets, and secondly, when they find Sameer’s alcohol is above the permissible levels when measured on the breathalyser, they take them both to the police station. From there, they call Mili’s father, who comes and takes her home. But the incident causes a chasm between the two, and her father stops talking to her. Mili is distraught. Sameer is preparing to leave for Delhi, while Mili’s departure for Canada would be a few days later. Her father asks the travel agent to expedite her case. One day Mili works very late into the night and is about to leave when two of her colleagues ask her to carry some foodstuff for them and keep it in the cold storage, as they are in a desperate hurry. Mili agrees, although she has punched out on the biometric machine. All this while, the Manager of the restaurant, a tyrant by the name of Sudheer Malkoti, is talking on the phone, away from them, about his personal, conjugal problems, with a friend. He finishes the call, checks on the biometric machine that all employees have left, and proceeds to lock the freezer chamber, completely unaware that Mili is inside.

Based on a Malayalam film called Helen, and directed by the same director, Mili is a clever re-working of Titanic, courtesy Ritesh Shah (Hindi screenplay) and original writers Alfred Kurian Joseph, Noble Babu Thomas and Mathukutty Xavier, the director of both versions. Helen won two National Film Awards: Best Debut Film of a Director and Best Make-up Artist (Ranjith Ambady), and Anna Ben, who played Helen, won the Kerala State– Special Jury Award. It was remade into Tamil as Anbirkiniyal (2021). So, it is hot material, even if the film is all about ice. Going back to Titanic, remove the boy from the icy layer of the sea and put him on the outside, to be part of the search team. Then put the girl on the inside. Let a cruel boss be the cause of her deathly plight, not a ship’s egotistic captain. Now you can fully showcase the protagonist from the halfway point.

Too much is made of the father’s smoking habit, and all of it inconsequential. An entirely different track is interwoven, about a callous and opinionated policeman and his upright colleague and boss, which is in addition to the romantic track involving Mili. In the freezer scenes, one does see some developments like bleeding injuries, dislocation of bones and dying mice, but the attempt to block or break the blowers comes very late in the day. Granted that Mili was numbed and therefore slow on the uptake, cinematically, it was expected that she would block and break at least one blower. Moreover, the only sound we hear are her grunts. Not that grunts need to be in perfect sync, but it would harm no one if they were. And why only grunts, groans and crying? She could talk to herself. What strikes you as a neat little move, Mili smiling at the security guard, turns into almost a monologue in the end. It is hard to accept such clear, flowing dialogue from a security guard. And what kind of freezer chamber was the restaurant operating? No alarm or switches inside? Yes, there is a moral to the story. But like all morals, it is delivered in the end.

What if the director showed us a tear flowing out of her eye and immediately freezing? No doubt there are some deft touches, like the phone falling and the battery popping out, the diversion created in the police station by two jailbirds to help a noble cause and the big, black ant falling in the refrigerator. Whatever Mili does to protect herself and nurse herself (she is a nurse) is very logical, but nothing is really ingenious. She makes best use of available resources. And once you are sure she will be rescued/will escape, the thrill of watching her struggle against all odds dampens that much. On the police front, it seems incredible that a superior is not aware of his junior’s negative traits and habits, and merely pulls him up for his serious lapses as if he has just learnt about them, only to put him back on the very case he is messing up. Scenes of flashbacks with the younger father and very young daughter on beaches and some other terrain are stereo-typical. What is worse is that the actor playing her father does not look twenty years younger, as he should. How Mili manages to survive the intense cold remains a mystery to the doctor, who attributes it to her strength. She is never shown as super-strong, so where did this strength come from? Anyway, let us suspend disbelief here, for we are at the climax.

Having come a long way from her debut in Dhadak (2018), Janhvi as Mili, in her sixth film, has a long way to go before she can carve a niche for herself in the mould of her super-talented mother, late Sridevi. She is more confident, appears vulnerable too, is more than reasonably good-looking and just about up to the task. Papa Boney Kapoor has produced this film, reposing tremendous confidence in her, and the film was shot in a real freezer. Of course, the temperatures of -12 to -18 must have been only on the thermometer, not in the freezer. However, she needs to work hard on her dialogue delivery, which often sounds like mumbling. Sunny Kaushal as Sameer is sincere and emotive. He is no stunner, which can also be said of his brother Vicky Kaushal, but does more than a decent job of his not too central role. Manoj Pahwa as her father just breezes through his character, showing us again how dependable he is. Seema Pahwa and Jackie Shroff (jailed convict) have brief appearances, wherein they leave impressions with a flair.

Rajesh Jais is Mohan Chachu, a part well-executed. A couple of performances stand out: Vikram Kochhar as Sudheer Malkoti, the Manager of Doon’s, and Anurag Arora as Sub-Inspector Satish Rawat, the shirking cop. Rawat’s character is extremely well-written. Sanjay Suri appears as Inspector Ravi Prasad, Satish’s boss. He looks dapper in the uniform but goes through the film with very few expressions. Hasleen Kaur as Hasleen, a colleague of Mili at the restaurant, is competent. Also in the cast are Raghav Binani, Joginder Goyat, Rishad Mahmud, Jay Parashar, Bhargav Polara, Deepak Simwal, Shekhar Singh, Feroz and Mayank Tiwari.

While Shaan Rahman composed the music for Helen, it is the maestro himself at work in Mili. There are two songs, both written by Javed Akhtar, and both stand out. Such projects are the delight of the make-up person, the cinematographer and the editor. Handling make-up is the original Helen make-up man Ranjith Ambady. Cinematography is by Sunil Karthikeyan and editing by Monisha R. Baldawa. All three have done a tremendous job. Yet, once Mili is trapped, the pace needed to be just a bit quicker than the total 127 minutes that we are served. But the wounds and bandages, the angles and the close-ups, the split second cuts, are a delight to watch. One or two awards under these categories cannot be ruled out. A bit sad though that all this does not add-up to a compelling movie experience.

Now that you have read it all, are you planning to chill out tonight?

Rating: **

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mdkn8TFSMQ