DMovies - Your platform for thought-provoking cinema
Feuding couple have to conceal a dead body in their flat during their extravagant Diwali party, in dark comedy investigating India's "a-moral" values and traditions - from the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM THE TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL

It all begins as an entirely viable drama and then rough a third of the way through the film it descends into a farcical caper. Sunil is alone at home and then a stranger knocks at his door. He says that they are related “by blood” and asks to come inside. A reluctant Sunil invites him in and offers him tea. Only for the stranger to reveal that he’s husband of Chhaya, the woman with whom Sunil is having an affair. The stranger proceeds to kill himself.

Sunil’s wife arrives at home and sees the corpse. Sunil does not want his wife to know that he’s having an affair, so he claims that the dead stranger is someone whom he fired recently. She buys the lie, and they conceal the body in a large wooden chest, just in time for the guests to arrive in their flat for the sumptuous Diwali party that they couple are throwing.

Each guest brings a new subplot along, including an elated friend who just landed a publication deal (played by the filmmaker Rajat Kapoor himself), an unpleasant elderly couple donning surgical masks and a pretty French lady who happens to be a “mentallist” (a person who read minds; her vaguely creepy and credible performance is one of the highlights of the film). To Sunil’s despair, weven Chhaya eventually decides to show up in search of her husband.

In the final third of the film, the deeply twisted values of each guest begin to surface. People are far more concerned about their job, their success, their appearances and even a Vietnamese vase than about a human life. These people are all complicit of each other in their corruption. They are “a-moral”, which is clarified by the means of in intertitle in the very beginning of the film.

All in all, Kadakh is an auspicious caper. The action is fast-faced enough to keep you hooked during the 96 minutes of duration. A jazzy music score with plenty of percussion and sax also helps to keep the action going. You will feel like you are inside someone’s flat in India during a Diwali party. There are a few continuity errors (such as the sun inexplicably rising from one sequence to the next without any time lapse), but this won’t prevent viewers from enjoying the film.

Kadakh is showing in the Competition at the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, which is taking place right now. DMovies is following the event live, as special guests invited by the Festival.

The film was dropped from the Mumbai Film Festival last month after the director was accused of sexual harassment.


By Victor Fraga - 25-11-2018

Victor Fraga is a Brazilian born and London-based journalist and filmmaker with more than 20 years of involvement in the cinema industry and beyond. He is an LGBT writer, and describes himself as a di...

DMovies Poll

Are the Oscars dirty enough for DMovies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Most Read

Sexual diversity is at the very heart of [Read More...]
Just a few years back, finding a film [Read More...]
Forget Friday the 13th, Paranormal Activity and the [Read More...]
A lot of British people would rather forget [Read More...]
QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN A candidate’s [Read More...]
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. [Read More...]

Read More

Bin U Bin, Elsewhere the Border (Bin U Bin, Ailleurs la Frontiere)

Mohamed Lakhdar Tati
2024

Victor Fraga - 12-12-2024

Petrol smugglers and filmmaker forge an unlikely bond as they seek to escape their existential rut - taciturn desert thriller is in the Main Competition of the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival [Read More...]

Hanami

Denise Fernandes
2024

Victor Fraga - 12-12-2024

Cape Verdean woman abandons her baby daughter on a volcanic island, in this fiery tale of failed motherhood and reconnection - from the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival [Read More...]

Freedom Way

Afolabi Olalekan
2024

Victor Fraga - 12-12-2024

Violence and corruption are the main currencies of Lagos, in this loose collection or urban parables from hell - from the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival [Read More...]