Cast: Tabu, Manoj Bajpayee, Annu Kapoor
Director: Mukul Abhyankar
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Playing out in the interiors and on the grounds of a luxury hotel in Port Louis, Mauritius, Missing skirts around the inevitable pitfall of shooting on such a balmy, picturesque setting. It doesn't degenerate into a superficial picture postcard film because it trains its focus firmly on an intriguing and whimsical narrative. It might occasionally seem too thickly plotted, but with several of the individual scenes livened up by the principal onscreen pair, Missing is always a few notches above the average.
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Amid a whole array of red herrings that are hidden in plain sight, Sushant Dubey (Bajpayee), who is on a business trip here from Reunion Island, and Aparna (Tabu), who has arrived on a ship with a baby swathed in a heavy bundle of cloth, begin to play mind games with each other - and the audience - even as a Hindi-speaking Mauritian police investigator Ram Khilavan Buddu (Annu Kapoor, who makes rather risible efforts to get his French diction right but is all over the place) and two of his men, who also speak our rashtra bhasha well enough, grill the two visitors who, on their part, have a rather stiff manner of conversing.
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It is clear from the very outset that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Director of photography Sudeep Chatterjee's fluid camerawork and evocative lighting and editor Shree Narayan Singh's always-on-the-ball cutting augment the suspense created by Bajpayee'e fascinating facial malleability and range of expressions and Tabu's innate ability to convey, with effortless ease, the intense anguish of a mother whose daughter has gone missing.
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That point is noted by the Mr. Dubey, who is one of the prime suspects: "When I was spinning a yarn, you were ready to believe me, but now that I am speaking the truth..." Between a complex web of lies, truths and half-truths, Missing probes flawed, fixated individuals in a drama about obsession, neurosis and survival instinct.
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Watch Missing for the brilliance of Bajpayee and Tabu and the promise that it suggests of greater things from the director. It is anything but a hit-and-miss effort.
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