[**** stars / *****]
I haven't seen a movie lately as charming and delicately affecting as Gantumoote, a splendidly-written coming-of-age Kannada romantic drama.
Rarely is a love affair told intimately from a girl or woman's point of view in Indian cinema, her thoughts and desires bared open to the audience. Even in movies with female protagonists, a third person narrative is usually used.
Writer and director Roopa Rao's Gantumoote (Baggage) has a teenage girl's tender observant narrative at its heart.
Movies versus reality
Meera (Teju Belawadi, superb) is a 16-year-old growing up in the nineties.
Meera's tryst with her first love Madhu (Nischith Korodi, good act) leads her to the discovery - the idea of love portrayed in popular movies she saw growing up are in extreme contrast to her experiences.
In fact she initially falls for Madhu because he looks like her crush - the Hindi film star Salman Khan.
The quiet, uncomplicated charm of growing up in the nineties, first sparks of adolescent love and sexual attraction, trauma inflicted by a jealous admirer, breaking away from school friends to college, heartbreak, agony, is captured with sure-footed sincerity and heart-touching sensitivity.
Sensitive screenplay
Gantumoote is Roopa Rao's beautiful ode to teenage love, with sensitive takes on worldly pressures, social conventions and a girl's fragile coming-of-age story.
If you thought south Indian regional movie makers rarely attempt anything remotely cinematic, Gantumoote should delightfully prove you wrong.
Afterword
A couple of well-made Hindi film narratives centering on a female lead include the lovely affirming drama Queen (2014) and the tense, humane spy thriller Raazi (2018).
As seen on Amazon Prime (India)
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