Not enough space to save the flavour

There is a Sri Lankan movie 'Machan' by Italian director Uberto Pasolini based on a true incident: a fake Sri Lankan national handball team tricked its way into a German tournament and vanished after the game. The slum dwellers' only hope for a better life was emigration and they succeeded in crossing the borders in this manner without any hassles. The film had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2008, where it received a standing ovation. The film could entice the audience with a rendering of the pathos of the down trodden, and won many accolades nationally and internationally, including the Audience Award at the Kerala International Film festival, 2008.

'Spanish Masala', the latest venture from Lal Jose, Benni P Nayarambalam and Dileep after 'Chandupottu' depicts the story of Charlie (Dileep), a mimicry artist, who decides to vanish after his program with the hope of making it big in Spain. As expected he loses the address and is lost in an alien culture. Charlie, who cannot speak any language other than Malayalam, lands up in a Malayali restaurant by easy luck and gets a job there as a cook. He experiments with varieties of dosa which once catches the attention of senorita Camilla, the only daughter of the former Spanish ambassador to India. On her insistence on eating dosa everyday, he is appointed as the palace chef. The beautiful girl raised by her ayah (Vinaya Prasad) later on falls in love with the ayah's son Rahul (Kunchako Boban). Her father opposes this relation, and Rahul is sent to a far off place. Shortly afterwards comes the news of his death in an accident. Camilla holds her father responsible for Rahul's death, quarrels with him, meets with an accident and loses her eye sight. The winsome Charlie slowly gets a place in the family, the father offers his
daughter's hand in marriage and when everything seemed moving in the right direction, he dies and Rahul makes a miraculous comeback. Everything becomes topsy –turvey after that and what follows leads to the denouement.

Coming back to 'Machan', the story justifies the need for a foreign location whereas in 'Spanish Masala' the story could have taken place anywhere. It is not the first time in Malayalam cinema that a hero in dire need of money is saved by a wealthy heroine (whether she speaks Spanish or not). And in this movie, it's the sheer luck of the audience that the heroine raised by a
Malayalee ayah speaks Malayalam and her household throngs with Malayalee servants! She can understand Malayalam pretty well and almost all the conversations are in the mother tongue; hence the director had no problem with the censor board in releasing this movie as a Malayalam language film!

Lal Jose had a foreigner as heroine in his earlier film 'Oru Arabi katha' where the story demanded the casting, for it's the nativity of the girl that attracts 'Cuba' Mukundan towards her. In 'Spanish Masala', apart from a lighting up her pretty face the nativity of the Spanish actor Daniela has neither significance nor any impact in the narrative. (as the heroines in
Anurag Basu's 'Kites' and Imtiaz Ali's 'Rock star' Daniela is another attractive face with a beautiful smile and a plastic expression). Regarding the title of the movie, if you are expecting a movie on the lines of 'Like Water for Chocolate' where food and the story narration have vital connections you will be heading for disappointment as the only association with food is that the producer (Noushad) and the hero in the film are chefs, and that Dileep makes a few dosas. And for those who have seen Zoya Akthar's 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaraa' the Spanish sights may not serve any eye candy either.

The songs look like a deliberate attempt to can the visually impressive Spanish sights (tomatina festival, bull fight, flamingo dance et al) as they are not backed by sensible lyrics to touch the heart strings. The cinematographer seems confused as to where to put the camera, with the end result that there are too many low angle shots with no purpose at all.
Other loose ends in the movie are the heroine's disability; she is blind in the first half of the movie due to a clot from a fall, but inexplicably retrieves eye sight one fine morning! When Rahul is declared dead in an accident, not even his mother demands to see his dead body, and everybody believes the story without blinking. Even the element of suspense in the climax is so
clichéd, one wonders whether to laugh or cry! Other than a few hilarious moments by Dileep the film falls flat on the palate. The director should have realized that an exotic locale alone wouldn't make a good movie.