‘Aasha’ movie review: Urvashi’s intense act stands out in a mystery that fizzles out after initial promise

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At times, one or two sequences are all it takes to turn an otherwise unremarkable movie into a worthwhile experience. A memorable shot or a standout performance can almost make one forget the rest of its failings. The scene involving Urvashi’s titular character and a doctor in Safar Sanal’s Aashacould have become a run-of-the-mill emotional sequence of a mother realising that something dreadful might have happened to her daughter.

But Urvashi lends an uncommon depth to the scene, with a performance that is not just a portrayal of a mother’s anguish over the immediate event, but also her own already frayed mental state. The way she lets stuttered words escape her lips, the voice modulation she employs, or even the way she fails to steadily hold a pen to sign a document, all come together to paint a picture of the ocean of worry within her.

Aasha, the character, spends much of the film in such a disturbed mental state, right from a tense encounter at a bank in the opening scene to the worries about her daughter Anagha’s (Aishwarya Lekshmi) marriage. One of the rare instances she smiles is in the presence of her neighbour (Vijayaraghavan). Even so, she has a relatively normal existence until a dispute over a road accident with Jeemon (Joju George).

For a while, the film teases the prospect of a battle of egos — similar to Ayyappanum Koshiyum (2020) — between Aasha and Jeemon. Halfway through, it takes a much darker turn. That is where the screenplay, co-written by Joju, Ramesh Girija and Safar Sanal, fizzles out too. Much like Aasha, who created this particularly difficult situation from which she cannot find any way of wriggling out, the screenwriters seem clueless as to the ways to untangle the situation. The abrupt, unsatisfactory end of the film further underlines this fact.

The primary conflict in the film is also on weak footing. Aasha’s drastic actions arise from certain assumptions about a situation, but it does not turn out to be a surprise for the audience when she finally realises the big picture. Some other sequences too seem contrived for cinematic conveniences. The music, the sound design (by Ajayan Adat, who plays a key character too), and other technical departments combine well to accentuate the dark mood in the later portions of the film. However, without ample support from the writing department, these do not leave the desired impact.

In the end, one is left only with Urvashi’s intense performances in some of the sequences, like a cricketer playing the lone stellar innings in a losing cause, a knock of such beauty that the result of the match becomes irrelevant. It again makes one realise how underutilised she has been recently in Malayalam cinema. If only the film had something more solid to back her, we might have had a gem of a movie.

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