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It is not easy to review Bougainvillea without giving away spoilers. I’ll give it a shot still. One that intends to be a whodunit, Amal Neerad’s film emerges as a howdunit as the ‘who’ angle isn’t that hard to decode. With a slow-burn narrative and devices such as memory loss and the disappearance of young women at use, the film is tightly wound on a screenplay that has confidence in the savagery of its antagonist.
Bougainvillea opens with ‘Neele Neele Ambar Par’ as spouses Dr. Royce (Kunchacko Boban) and Reethu’s (Jyothirmayi) meet with a car accident. After the event, Reethu develops retrograde amnesia. Many years later, we observe her living a stable life with her husband and two children.
Set in Kerala’s Idukki district, the film’s backdrop with lush greenery and topsy-turvy roads gives Amal Neerad the canvas to paint his usual mastery. There is a generous use of colors, lights, and foliage. The family resides in a bungalow where Reethu repeatedly paints bougainvillea flowers. Dressed in sweaters, dresses, and dungarees, she is a visibly odd block in the puzzle.
Giving Reethu company in Royce’s absence is Rema (Srinda), the housekeeper, whose husband Biju (Sharaf U Dheen) is a driver. The perturbed Royce’s only relief is his weekend drive to his grandfather’s farmhouse. As the family dabbles with their everyday woes, top cop ACP David Koshy IPS (Fahadh Faasil) knocks on their door. An influential man’s daughter is missing and the home-bound Reethu is the suspect. Reason? There’s circumstantial evidence from a CCTV camera.
Speaking of CCTV, Royce had one set up in their house to track Reethu’s movements. How would the woman – with dwindling memory – remember if she had known the missing girl? As Bougainvillea attempts to work around the idea of memory (explored recently in Kishkindha Kaandam), the screenplay gets curiouser and curiouser. Come to think of it, Reethu in Bougainvillea is an exasperated Alice in Wonderland. She wouldn’t know if her memories were real or hallucinated.
Enter Meera Vasundhara, a criminal psychologist, who helps Davis in his mission. The duo’s interactions with Reethu are overbearingly tense as Neerad holds his screenplay tight. Bougainvillea’s ability to trigger anxiety is its biggest achievement.
The issue occurs when the filmmaker gets consumed by it. It is great to foreshadow and keep the audience in the dark, but it loses flavor when you overdo it. In such an attempt, Neerad’s imagination begins to defy logic. There’s a specific moment that the filmmaker believes to be the money shot. The background score elevates. The camera changes its motion. There’s a wicked expression on the actor’s face. Any intelligent viewer would echo why none of it was required. From this point, Bougainvillea dips to never really return to the excitement it generated in the first three acts.
That said, Amal Neerad’s film demands your rapt attention. There are countless light touches to connect dots later. Reethu’s habit of using the bathtub, her scene in front of the bathroom mirror, Royce’s interaction with a patient, the dog attack on Reethu, or even a simple retort by Meera about the lack of mustard seeds in her coconut chutney – every gesture, every line means or signals to something. Bougainvillea throws more obvious hints – such as the paintings of sunflowers, Batman, and a rabbit. There’s also a chapter on a stolen bracelet that does not establish much besides the physical strength of one of the characters.
Very few of these Easter eggs contribute to revealing the mystery in Bougainvillea. Instead, the last act gives the person a dated Manichithrathazhu-like backstory. The bigger question here is why a psychopath can’t just be a psychopath. A hobbyist. Why do we need a rationale behind every crime? Delving too much into the motives and incredulous execution of the crimes in the last 30 minutes, Amal Neerad’s film turns ho-hum with a convenient resolution.
Bougainvillea is near-perfect in the technical departments. Sushin Shyam composes a scintillating score, and the end-credit song is a riot. Anend C. Chandran’s camera is marvelous as it elevates the film, not only with the frame compositions but also the zooms, angles, and motion technique. The Idukki-Kottayam dialect is nicely executed with the dialogues (Lajo Jose, Amal Neerad) echoing the sound of the region.
ALSO READ: ‘Bheeshma Parvam’ review – Amal Neerad’s Mammootty starrer is a scintillating crime saga
The biggest redeeming factors in a chaotic screenplay are the performers. Jyothirmayi, who returns to cinema after over a decade, delivers the year’s finest female leading act in a Malayalam film thus far. It’s an author-backed part that the actor pulls off with strength and vulnerability. Kunchacko Boban gets the assignment right. As Royce, he is a force of nature despite a controlled gait and subtle expressions. Srinda is superb and is a solid emotional anchor in the plot. Veena Nandakumar, too, does a fantastic job in a crucial role. The scene where she spots a wall with framed bougainvillea paintings is a high point in Neerad’s film. Sharaf U Dheen gets enough meat to chew on and the actor delivers a convincing show as always.
With limited screen space, Fahadh Faasil’s cop gets a major disservice in Bougainvillea. In the era of CCTV, GPS, and background verifications, a routine investigation would have revealed the mess way early in the story. The cop misses out on collecting something as basic as the suspect’s government ID. At one point, the officer confesses to his colleague how bad he was at his job. I couldn’t agree more. Amal Neerad’s film is a rousing experience, for sure. Yet its constant demand to suspend your disbelief is not for viewers who bought into the plot for its initial intelligence.
Rating: ★★★
