Chitra Varga

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 r...