WHEN REALITY IS AT LOGGERHEADS WITH FANTASY...OR VICE VERSA!

It is often said that we all need fantasy to survive the reality. "ಲೂಸಿಯಾ" ('Lucia'), a 2013 critically-acclaimed Kannada film, deals with a theme that features reality to survive in fanstasy. The psychological thriller was crowd-funded and also remade in Tamil as Enakkul Oruvan in 2015.

The experimental flick is perhaps a tad too much of a cerebral challenge for mass audiences, who like the action and emotion neat and straight. Keeping pace with the narrative of Lucia is taxing for the average viewer.

The film has two parallel plots with non-linear, knitted narratives– one is grounded in reality and the other embedded in a dream. In essence, the theme is similar to that of a zillion movies featuring look-alike replicas or schizophrenic personas, except a virtual, second-life-like realm underpins Lucia. In a sub-plot, a police team is busy busting a drug mafia.

The male protagonist, Nikhil, or Nikki (Ninasam Sathish), is an indigent, insomniac usher at a ramshackle movie theatre in one of the two plots, and a film celebrity in the other. He pines for his love, Shwetha (Sruthi Hariharan), a successful model and a pizzeria waitress in the two versions.

The movie begins with the comatose Nikhil on life support– the result of consuming a designer pill, which combats sleep disorders, but, on the downside, also engineers the illusory fulfillment of worldly aspirations in sleep. The climax reveals a twist that blurs on reel the line between the 'real' and the 'surreal'.

The film written, co-edited and directed by Pawan Kumar is prodigious in conception, but, prosaic in execution. The script staggers and stumbles with its load of unwanted, unnecessary item numbers. The encumbered narrative results in a movie, which is a good 30 minutes too long, too slack.

Result: monotonous, meandering that makes one await the climax impatiently!

The blind adding of abstract content subtracts from the cinematic experience. Pawan would do well to remember that unfettered creative license only makes his product confusingly esoteric, not convincingly exotic. Nevertheless, he gets high marks for Kafkaesque effort, if not for finesse.

Both Neenasam Satish and Sruthi Hariharan have put up commendable performances. But, the standout portrayal is that of Achyuth Kumar, as the theatre owner, Shankranna.

Music by Poornachandra Tejaswi is noteworthy. But, Siddarth Nuni, the real high-flier of the movie, has created magic with his extraordinary camera work, which seems to have borrowed elements from the art movements of surrealism, impressionism and expressionism.

On the whole, Lucia seems to have used the Sci-Fi Psychological Thriller, “Inception”, for its inspiration. If so, Pawan Kumar is perhaps an Indian Chris Nolan clone, and Nikki his Dom Cobb wannabe!

My rating: 7.5 on 10!