Despite the expectations aroused by John Malkovich’s fulsome
endorsement, Santosh Sivan’s low-budget first feature is
disappointing. The story is set in the South Indian jungle and centres
on19-year-old Malli’s induction into a suicide bombing mission on
behalf of a shadowy political cause. The photography is striking but
the film is poorly edited and paced, Malli’s sojourn with a poor farmer
in the second half fatally stalling narrative drive and occasionally
degenerating into sentimentality. More problematically it never
fully gets under the skin of its female protagonist to properly explore
her motivations, curtailing the potential for emotional
involvement.
