On the side of a boat trudging unsteadily across the Poovar backwaters is Roy, sea-sick and throwing up. He manages a smile as he spots another friend follow suit. This is how we are introduced to Mathew Thomas’s character in Christy - a boy in the final years of school, slacking off and having such fun with mates that it will make one miss school. A catchy title song sets the tone of the film against the backdrop of Poovar, a town to the south of Thiruvananthapuram, where a lake, river, and sea merge. It is into this boyhood life that director Alvin Henry plants a forbidden love story where a boy falls in love with a woman several years older than him.
Malavika Mohanan’s titular character Christy is slightly confusing if you watch the film with fixed ideas about what a woman of her disposition would act like. She is back with her parents after separating from her husband, and appreciably, only vague references to a bad marriage are made in the film. The script is written by Benyamin and GR Indugopan, two noted Malayalam authors. Literary elements are visible in the brevity of descriptions, lines that comfortably fall short of being cheesy. Roy, predicting the feelings that he thinks Christy will have for him, tells his friend, “Can’t you feel the breeze when it comes? I know Chechi’s love.”
Chechi is what he calls her, a usage in Malayalam to address elder women, as she comes into his life in the role of a tutor to help him pass his final exams. It is an adorable relationship at first, as the two find comfort in each other’s company. Christy says, “You are the only comfort in my life now.” Her parents – the always complaining Joy Mathew and a not-so-supportive Neena Kurup – are no solace. It is warm to watch the relationship between Christy and Roy grow, just two people becoming close without attaching meanings to it. But Roy, being the age he is, begins to get excited every time they are together, a wide smile on his face when she calls him. Mathew is simply great to watch in every change he goes through on screen.
Watch: Trailer of the film
All the care given to this blossoming of a bond – be it the shots of them cycling together, Roy taking his bike into the dark and beautiful Poovar, or the background music by Govind Vasantha – seems to fade when the movie reaches midway. By then, Christy is in the distant Maldives, and Roy is still in Poovar. A lengthy and pointless sequence is then woven around airports, which simply seems to stretch and reach nowhere.
Though the film is named after the woman, it really is Roy’s tale. Christy, at times bold and other times confused, does not seem to have the will to act or decide. You don’t and are perhaps not meant to understand her as you do Roy. He is stripped down to his last thought and most of the time, wears his heart on his sleeve.
Only the attempts at maintaining a Poovar dialect take the performances down a notch. With all the flaws though, Alvin Henry’s work shows promise, as can be gauged from the earlier half of the film, which is appreciably structured.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film's producers or any other members of its cast and crew.