Director: Eashvar Karthic
Cast: Keerthy Suresh
Let’s start with a fun fact about penguins. We always tend to associate penguins with the colder reaches of the Antarctic region, or colder climate zones in general. But did you know that more species of penguins actually lived in warmer climates?
Tamil cinema’s latest OTT release Penguin (produced by ace director Karthik Subbaraj) has its story set in Kodaikanal, probably one of the coldest places in the whole state. So what species of penguins would we get to find here? For starters, definitely one where Mama Penguin turns superwoman and goes all guns blazing to rescue Baby Penguin, when he gets snatched away from her by Evil Penguin. Or at least, that’s how the plot of the bedtime story the film’s protagonist Rhythm (Keerthy Suresh) reads to her two-year-old son Ajay during the opening scenes of the film goes.
In the opening sequences, the film actually cross-cuts between two time periods. We first meet the Rhythm of today, who is a recently married woman and an expectant mother. We then flashback to six years earlier, where we meet Rhythm again, but this time married to a different man and as a mother of the two-year-old boy Ajay. In the present-day scenes, we feel a melancholic vibe about her and sense that something is off. She often spends time alone near a lake and has panic/anxiety attacks triggered by the sight of swarms of insects or moths. She has obviously undergone trauma in the intervening period and the scars are nowhere close to healing.
Over the course of the opening act, we learn more about these traumatic years. Her son Ajay has been abducted by a mysterious psychopath (who dresses himself up as Charlie Chaplin), and the search over the last six years hasn’t yielded a single clue. The police are inclined to believe that the boy must have been killed and so do most others. But maternal instinct keeps Rhythm going at the search, even if it means she is totally alone in her endeavour. This loneliness is captured sublimely by the DOP Karthik Palani, who often puts Rhythm alone in the middle of enchanting wide landscape shots, including a stunning sequence where she is captured in an inverted frame as she drives alone through the mountains. Without Ajay, her life has indeed turned upside down.
The film takes a brilliant turn at this point though. The long lost Ajay suddenly re-appears out of the blue and takes everyone by surprise, none more than Rhythm who almost runs him over in a fit of shock and astonishment. Though a couple of feet taller now, he seems to be a shadow of his younger self. He has bruises all over and savagely sinks his teeth into food when offered, like an animal would. He speaks no words but eerily croons a few lines of the nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle, twinkle..’ every now and then. What’s spookier still, is that he seems to have developed a violent streak and also taken to painting images, many of which show the ‘Charile Chaplin’ villain watching over him from right outside his window sill.
As she nurses her son back to health, Rhythm starts seeking answers. She wants to find the kidnapper and learn the motive behind this dastardly act. There is a sense of urgency, as she fears he might come back for Ajay again any moment. The writing is terrific in these parts. The scenes move at a gripping pace and the imagery, aided by Santhosh Narayanan’s mesmerizing score gives you just the right amount of creeps and thrills to keep you completely hooked.
Rhythm’s sleuth work, in which she is ably assisted by her pet dog Cyrus, finally does lead to a startling breakthrough. A prime suspect is apprehended and caught in the act in a stunningly choreographed sequence. But just when it looks like her quest for answers is about to end, more questions end up arising.
And this is where sadly, the film begins to royally crumble. The makers seem to have felt the inexplicable need to add more and more layers of complexity to the so-far solid tale and only end up getting caught under its own weight. The script completely loses the razor-sharp edge it carried till this point and the denouement, when it finally arrives, is silly, blunt and a total let down.
Keerthy Suresh, who won the National Award for her role in Mahanati, comes up with another star turn in Penguin. She is endearing in her delicate, yet stubborn portrayal of Rhythm, a woman with a traumatized past, trying to find answers and re-build her life. Also, it has to be remembered that her character is pregnant in most of the scenes and she pulls off the requisite mannerisms and kinesics with total conviction. This is the reason I was really unhappy with how the whole film finally turned out. An actress who has put in this mammoth effort deserved a much stronger script that could keep up with her own tenacity. There are obviously no penguins in Kodaikanal, but it is Keerthy Suresh who gets left out in the cold.
Overall rating: 2/5
