94. Merry Christmas; movie review

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Cert 12A

144 mins

BBFC advice: Contains moderate bloody images, threat, sex references, domestic abuse references

An old-fashioned murder mystery, Bollywood-style, starring three of India's most acclaimed actors.

The omens were good, and after a methodical if slow beginning, Sriram Raghavan's Merry Christmas largely delivers.

This is one of Katrina Kaif's finest performances as a mother whose husband is away with his mistress on Christmas Eve.

Her character, Maria, is left with her young daughter (Pari Maheshwari Sharma) in a restaurant and bumps into Albert (Vijay Sethupathi), who has just returned to his hometown after the death of his mother.

There is an uncanny magnetism between them, so despite her being married, they spend a romantic few hours together.

However, tragedy strikes and Albert is forced to make an earth-shattering confession.

Merry Christmas has shades of Knives Out with Sanjay Kapoor and Vinay Pathak among those either facing suspicion or trying to work our whodunnit.

It also feels like a theatre piece, as most of the action is in four or five rooms, and much of the emphasis is on clever dialogue.

I particularly enjoyed what is effectively an invitation to the audience to decide between clues and red herrings.

And I was taken back to my childhood when I was bamboozled by an origami show on TV.

Merry Christmas has style and substance and is quite different from any Bollywood movie I have seen.

Reasons to watch: A smartly executed thriller

Reasons to avoid: Takes too long in the set-up

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 8/10

Did you know? Merry Christmas is based on Frédéric Dard's French novel Le Monte-charge (Bird in a Cage).

The final word. Sriram Raghavan: "The biggest enjoyment for me was the way it shifted while scripting to editing, slowly from that hard-nosed thriller to this romance. I thought it would be a 90-minute thriller with no interval. But as we fleshed it out, it changed for the better and the best." ABP

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