EPIC - First Semester, produced by Sithara Entertainments and Fortune Four Cinemas, is playing in theatres.
Plot:
Aditya and Kadali, two Telugu NRIs pursuing their MS degrees in the UK, move in together and quickly bond over shared intimacy, which soon evolves into deep love. However, reality catches up with them: Aditya has abandoned his dream of becoming a filmmaker, while Kadali faces the pressure of returning home to India. Will they find a way to stay together, or will destiny push them down separate paths?
Performances & Technical Departments:
Anand Deverakonda is a disarming everyman. His Aditya is a bundle of hesitations, half-formed sentences, and quiet longing, and he plays every fumble with an unforced honesty. Opposite him, Vaishnavi Chaitanya is the film's spine. Her Kadali is all sharp edges, a woman who has already made peace with the world's contradictions.
More than Sivaji and Vasuki Anand (who play Aditya's parents), it is Kalyan Shankar (MAD fame director) who gets more screentime. His conversations with the lead man are among the film's chief scenes.
Hesham Abdul Wahab's score does what his best work always does: it breathes rather than announces itself. Azeem Mohammad's camera work and Avinash Kolla's production design are a disappointment, though. Barring a few outdoor locations, the film feels limited, with many scenes taking place in a studio room (the green matte substitutes the picturesque London).
Post-Mortem:
Writer-director Aditya Hasan picks up from his web series, #90s - A Middle Class Biopic. In a not-so-triumphant manner, EPIC has that web series-esque feel. It's only the songs that keep elevating it to the level of cinema.
Why Kadali takes a liking to Aditya never makes much sense. For a 24-year-old modern woman who is pining for freedom in a foreign land, her thinking feels unformed. As an aspiring Associate Professor, all that we remember of her after the end of the first half is that she is quite horny. The film over-indulges her as much as she over-indulges Aditya's immaturity and lack of firm opinions. When she smokes away, the background score turns poetic.
Aditya comes with the mental age of a 15-year-old, and the self-deprecating humour of a memer. When he has a hormonal upsurge, he exclaims he just had goosebumps. You can be sure that he never even watched p0rn all his life, but life threw a googly at him in the form of a freedom-loving, ultra-romantic woman who likes to use the word s3x every five minutes. He harbours multiple fears, all of which as per him are probably attributable to his middle-class family background (his father is a government school teacher, a privilege the vast majority of his countrymen don't have, by the way). All his reactions are comical, played purely for laughs until the pre-climax. He panics more than usual, but his GF never sees any abnormality in it.
For the most part, the film's intent is clear: keep the audience entertained by playing up bedroom intimacy, and Aditya's perennial under-confidence. The writing leaves you a bit confused otherwise. After his first sexual encounter with Kadali, Aditya is advised by his friend to behave as if nothing had happened last night. But then, he does the exact opposite: he behaves differently and awkwardly. Is it because the film is self-aware? Or, does director Aditya Hasan believe that is behaving as if nothing happened? You can't be sure.
The final 25 minutes is where the film actually holds up. The coming-of-age nature of the scenes is evident in these portions. The film has been promoted as an "unfinished story".
Closing Remarks:
EPIC – First Semester finds flashes of charm in its awkward romance. But thin characterisation, repetitive convos and constrained visuals hold it back. The emotionally stronger final stretch hints at the film it could have been.
