Peddlers by Vasan Bala

This Indian first feature is presented as ‘another vision of Mumbai’, and surely besides the alleys, it has the middle class, it has the parties and the drugs, all underscored by a camerawork echoing an (American) indie visual style. The story is kind of patched together with the visuals following in its wake, forming a strange amalgam of intensely striking scenes with a lot of what-the-hell-is-going-ons.

Ranjit is a hansom shy cop who takes a girl to his room after a party, empties a bottle of vodka down her throat and stages a non-existent sexual escapade before leaving her in the morning, dumbfounded. The source of his increasingly bad behaviour is, quite thinly, an erectile problem that makes it impossible for him to relate to women, especially his fiancée, without feeling wounded to the (masculine) core. Parallel there is the story of Bilkis, a young chemistry teacher with a terminal illness who takes up drug trafficking to provide for her small son, and Mac, a young and slightly lost youth who develops a profound crush on Bilkis who he shares a room with. The two stories collide when Mac tries to rob a game hall and Ranjit is sent after him, initiating a cat and mouse hunt that will last until the end of the film, crisscrossing social strata and beautiful scenery.

The acting is sound as well as the imagery, but an underdeveloped script makes for too much helterskeltering for the story to really latch on. Mac’s lost youth character is the most believable in contrast to a ‘Breaking Bad Bilkis’ and a Ranjit whose problem is not convincing enough to motivate his extreme violence. Nonetheless, the strong scenes hit their target and when finding the right balance, Bala will give birth to a gem in the coming years.

by Maartje Alders (Netherlands)