Archana 31 Not Out

 

Story: After multiple marriage proposals flop due to a variety of reasons, Archana is happy that Middle-East-based Prasad is, finally, interested in marrying her. While the household celebrates the pre-wedding night, Archana grapples with an information that comes her way, out of the blue. How will she handle it?

Review: We have already seen in many films how women, who get left at the altar, handle the situation and emerge a different version of themselves. Archana 31 Not Out, too, tells the tale of a rural Malayali woman, who tries to take matters into her hands as her wedding plans go awry.

Archana (Aishwarya Lekshmi) is a teacher who holds a temporary job at a school in Palakkad. Alongside shouldering her family’s financial responsibilities, she also tries to find a partner via the traditional ‘arranged-marriage’ route, though it proves to be hardly easy for numerous reasons. When Prasad, who works abroad, expresses interest to marry her, Archana feels a glimmer of hope and gets busy with the preparations. As the pre-wedding dinner gets served, Archana receives a call with an unpleasant news. The movie goes on to show how she handles the conundrum.

The film deserves credit for staying free of extremely drippy sentimentality, which we have seen in films for years, when such a situation emerges. Not that those involved aren’t emotional, confused or crestfallen, but the film attempts some innovative story-telling methods to present them, though their potential to impress the audience can be subjective. Aishwarya Lekshmi should be lauded for playing the jilted woman, wrapped in many layers of vulnerability and diffidence despite her many, hardly explored talents and capabilities. The film also presents well the numerous cliched questions that come the way of an unmarried woman in her late twenties or early thirties, and how self-absorbed, judgmental and critical guests can be at a wedding function. How Archana handles the situation at the climax is definitely interesting, and makes one wonder, ‘Yes, why not more women do what Archana did? Isn’t that a positive way to wrap this up?’

There are quite a few moments in the film in which it is very clear the makers were trying to generate some situational laughter. Many of them, sadly, do not land. There are even some well-known actors-backed characters, whom we keep waiting to do some magic on the screen, but end up making no difference other than lengthening the running time. Some of the angles, like Archana’s interest in cricket, could have been explored better to spice up the proceedings, rather than limiting them to casual conversations and scribblings on walls. The songs in the narrative hardly make an impact, rather than making one impatient, wondering how the situational soup in its backdrop would turn out to be. More than anything, the movie would have benefited tremendously from a shorter duration or even a short-film format for that matter.