If the first image that comes to your mind when you think of a film is that of a man in a tub, it might have either been a really soothing experience or else a disturbing one. With Sunny, it is somewhere in between. Sunny, the man in the tub, has a bottle and a glass half filled with whiskey. And the tub has an air of independence, placed as it is in the middle, no walls attached. Sunny and his tub are in a world of their own. And that’s what the film’s writer and director Ranjith Sankar talks about: Sunny’s solitude.
From the first few minutes, some facts are made clear. Sunny (Jayasurya) is a man coming to Kochi from the Gulf and he has problems. On a cab ride from the airport, he looks lost, hardly answers the driver’s many questions, quietly burns his passport and throws it away. Sunny is going to spend his time quarantining at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Kochi, a luxury waterfront hotel that is going to cost him plenty. The taxi driver says, only people like Sir can afford it. Sunny’s friend Kozhi (Aju Varghese’s voice) asks on the phone, did you win a lottery?
Sunny is not interested in giving answers. All he wants are bottles of alcohol, any brand. But the hotel room is nearly like a prison – he can’t get out of it, no one can get into it, he cannot have people bring him stuff from outside. This isn’t helping Sunny, the man with many problems.
For some reason Jayasurya has grown a long beard to turn into Sunny. It doesn't exactly fit the businessman profile he had in the Gulf. It could be that Sunny has lost all interest in peripheral matters such as grooming. Even as the hopeless bearded guy though, the actor’s famous wit pronounces itself, in a few fitting lines. Murmurs mostly. The rest of the time he is busy falling off couches and trapping an ant in an upturned glass – a direct metaphor of the state he is in.
For all the loosening of tongue and slipping toes, Jayasurya might have really snuck in a few pegs, you imagine. The man’s that convincing. His disinterest in sharing his stories to the stranger doctor on the phone (Innocent as a counsellor speaking for some reason, really really slowly) is perfectly understandable. So the back story takes time to drop on the screen, piece by piece. At first there are the pictures of a pregnant woman and a baby that Sunny lovingly scrolls through. Then Kozhi brings a piece of the past – Sunny’s college days as a composer. Finally, an angry man with a Thrissur accent (Siddique) threatens him all cinema-villain-like, for leaving the Gulf the way he did.
Watch: Trailer of Sunny
It is a novel comfort that Sunny doesn’t sit in his tub and dwell into dreary long flashbacks and songs of a happy time. The past is concluded in a few feelingly told strips between doctor and patient, and then to a stranger who appears on a balcony. You don’t entirely see the stranger – a woman also in quarantine – but her character is interestingly built in the few scenes where she pops half her head out. Sort of sweet, the balcony to balcony talks and the closeness guaranteed for two people trapped in boring quarantines. But the woman is obviously taking it much better than her neighbour below, she orders her biriyanis and chooses really odd hours to practise dance.
Sunny’s story in itself is not novel, it is a mix of a few miseries that an expatriate married man can bring with him. But his character’s presentation brings an adorable newness to it. Not because he is mostly the only character on the screen but that you don't really mind that.
Only, the presentation could have come with a little less music in the background. Understandably a tale of solitude, and of a musician especially, might do nicely with some mellow notes in the air. But refusing to merge into the background (as background music should) and then sounding a tad unoriginal when it turns into an important composition is a little discomforting.
The ending doesn’t carry the conviction of the beginning. You could buy it if there had been a lapse of time, at least of a few long weeks. But for a carefully presented tale there suddenly are too many quick fixes, characters changing their minds overnight, fast recoveries and hurriedly closed gaps. It works in the interest of keeping the overall runtime short (hurray for 90 minute movies). But you can't stretch your legs and sit back till the 80th minute and then hurriedly finish the game. Otherwise, Sunny's alright.
The film is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.