Sufiyum Sujathayum review: When ‘eternal love’ comes undercooked

Cast: Jayasurya, Aditi Rao Hydari, Dev Mohan
Director: Naranipuzha Shanavas
Rating: 2/5

'Eternal love' is a phrase producers and PRs often use to sell a movie. But as far as a director is concerned, it is tricky territory. What it generally refers to is two people caring for each other long after they have been pulled apart, either by other people or circumstances.

‘Sufiyum Sujathayum’ tells the story of the “eternal love” between an unnamed Sufi and Sujatha, a mute upper-caste Hindu woman.

What Shanavaz trusts his story on is the highly exoticised figure of a Sufi. The director is not bothered by how real-life sufis live their lives; he is content with a recycled pop culture image. Played by the first-timer Dev Mohan, the sufi has biceps the size of boulders and betrays any semblance of the modest living his community is known for.

Aditi has something of a young Shobhana about her. The co-incidence — if that is what it is — is strengthened by the fact that one of Shobana’s big roles was 1988’s ‘Dhwani’, where she too played a mute woman. But in ‘Dhwani’, the female lead being mute was a thematic component; in ‘Sufiyum Sujathayum’, it is merely an ornament.

It conveniently also makes the casting of Aditi Rao Hydari, who knows no Malayalam, as Sujatha possible.

But neither Aditi nor the filmmaker realises that so much more goes into a role than the language the character speaks. The Tamil actor Vijay Sethupathi, in a recent conversation, had said he would stay away from doing Hindi films for now, although he knows the language because he has not studied the culture enough.

Aditi runs where angels fear to tread. ‘Prajapati’, her previous outing in Malayalam was a potboiler where she just had to look pretty. A serious movie like ‘Sufiyum Sujatayum’ needed more study, and Aditi has not done it.

We can believe that the Sufi and Sujatha are attracted to each other because they are both attractive, but the director skips to tell us what makes the two click, and therefore renders their “eternal love” hard to believe.

In fact, the lack of development applies to a variety of things in the film. The mentor figure who brings Sufi to Sujatha’s village, and whose grave he revisits a decade later, looks like he is taken from Tilakan’s character in ‘Ustad Hotel’, but the part is utterly unconvincing, and you would struggle to remember the actor’s face two minutes after watching the movie.

The only “joke” in the film is when a parrot repeats what one of the characters is saying. I don’t suppose anyone who watches the movie will laugh at that.

There is a saving grace to the movie and it is a big one: Jayasuriya. As Sujatha’s frustrated husband in the present — the love story takes place in a flashback — he is the most precious thing in the film.

He is the spectrum to Aditi’s vanilla, and even makes seasoned performers like Siddique, who plays Sujatha’s father, look tame. If you want to watch this movie, he is probably the reason you should. If you don’t, check out M Jayachandran’s excellent song ‘Vathilkkalu Vellaripravu’.