Last Order
Kannada (Short film/YouTube)
Director: Prashanth Gowda
Cast: Ramya Krishna, Rakshith Kariyanna
3/5
‘The Last Order’, a nine-minute film, is produced by cinematographer Satya Hegde (‘Duniya’, ‘Jackie’, ‘Kendasampige’ fame). It is about a female food delivery partner and her occupational hazards as she takes care of her ailing mother and a ‘spoiled’ brother.
The short, written and directed by Prashanth Gowda, scores high on portraying the problems the protagonist. One man’s inappropriate touch, another one’s nasty stare and a bike chase in remote roads for cheap thrills- these sequences shows the horrors of being a working-woman in the night.
The fast moving jump cuts, which reflect the routine of a delivery partner, are a plus. It highlights how the algorithm-driven food delivery app’s 5-star rating system can be crucial in a delivery partner’s life.
But the over-dramatisation and an apparent moral judgement in the climax stops the film from being perfect. The film ends on the moral superiority of the protagonist- a ‘good’ woman who works hard to look after her family is juxtaposed with the protagonist’s brother, who is apparently ‘spoiled’, as he smokes, drinks and sleeps with a ‘bad’ woman.
A female food delivery partner is a rarity. So the film could have explored more on the vulnerabilities of gig economy workers and what happens when a woman enters the domain. But it falls prey to the typical shortcoming of a ‘man-telling-woman’s-story’ film, where there is no room to explore ambiguities of a life situation but instead it dwells only on the congested space of the ‘black and white’ moral universe.
Despite the flaws, one cannot rule out the tinge of freshness it brings out in its crisp narration.