Nila

One cannot help but be reminded by Scorsese's masterpiece, TAXI DRIVER (1976), when seeing various shots of the taxi driving through the wet night streets. Only difference is that it's not on the streets of New York, but in India, where a country boy moves to the city and drives a rundown cab to make ends meet. One night he picks up a gorgeous woman who happens to be his childhood sweetheart. They somewhat rekindle their past, but she is stand-offish, reluctant to let him get too close, setting up an intriguing premise.

The first half plays like a whimsical love story with some integrity. Maybe this section goes that little bit too long, slightly repetitive but still enjoyable enough. It's until the hidden secret is revealed that the story comes alive, taking it onto another level. After a while the filmmaker somehow gets a little lost, not being clear in the direction of the protagonist who seems to bumble his way through his indecisive behavior. But the final scene is brilliant and brings the film back on course.

The two leads are brilliant, you can watch them all night and not get tired of their beauty.The technical aspect holds it together, with the continuity of cinematography sometimes slightly askew and that's maybe because of the various hands that shot it. Still this is an interesting piece of low budget independent work from a country full of many surprises.

The rainy nights and the warm glow just enhances the moodiness and coziness of the movie. This beautifully named movie features an equally beautiful cast, who can speak with their eyes. The lead actor plays a cab driver in a big city (not sure which one, if at all it was mentioned), who chances once, upon his childhood sweetheart as a passenger, who initially doesn't recognize him, but eventually does and then slowly becomes his regular passenger. A short flashback from their childhood and their current soft interactions with even fewer words, stolen gazes, mostly from the guy towards the girl, spread over many nights, as he makes excuses to pick and drop her between her home and workplace fills most of the run time. She seems somewhat out of his league, but we are hopeful of a budding romance developing, as time progresses and their interactions increases.

There are scenes where the actors are silent and their hesitant thoughts and feelings are apparent through their eyes and face. The director(s) have captured it very well, in fact I re-winded and re-watched these silent bits, which speak a lot without the aid of words.The movie has no song or dance, but there are bits of old Tamil and Hindi songs playing over the radio in the cab, increasing the nostalgia quotient. It does have some expletives in Hindi at the beginning and once after the midway point.

It's good this movie was made. Even though it seems to be set in the current day, it had a charm from the older, simpler times, and almost like reading a lovely book. Interestingly, at the end, it credits many people who partially crowdfunded it. Wonder how was the campaign sold to those people. Hope we see more of such independent movies