A voyage of discovery is a favoured narrative convention for filmmakers and showrunners, but in Sweet Kaaram Coffee, a Tamil-language Amazon Prime Video series created by Reshma Ghatala and directed by Bejoy Nambiar, Krishna Marimuthu and Swathi Raghuraaman, it isn't just another done-to-death device. It takes many delightful detours that lead to fascinating places and experiences.
Propelled by three scintillating performances by Lakshmi, Madhoo and Santhy Balachandran, representing three generations as actresses and as the characters that they are on screen, Sweet Kaaram Coffee explores mortality, freedom and the desire to live life on one's own terms. A sense of rootedness elevates the tale to a significantly lofty plane when a degree of mush and contrivance threatens to overrun the show.
Sweet Kaaram Coffee, written by Reshma Ghatala, Swathi Raguraaman, Vinithra Madhavan Menon and Krishnaswamy Rajkumar, is both spicy and honeyed, and heart-warming and prickly. It is about three women from three generations who decide to go on a life-altering trip in a car that the youngest of them borrows from a friend.
The journey from drudgery to discovery takes them away from the regimen that they are subjected to at home by a man who is son to one of the older women, husband to the other, and father to a girl in need of a break from a guy who she is in love with but in two minds about going the whole hog with.
On the road, the trio stumbles upon unknown worlds, make new friends, develop fresh perspectives and get in touch with their inner selves, all of which help them see their lot in life in a fresh light. The narrative is interspersed with flashbacks that bring the audience up to speed with what the women have been through on their way here.
Sundari (Lakshmi, luminous) is a recently widowed, diabetic septuagenarian whose overbearing son, Rajaratnam (Kavin Jay Babu), gives her no breathing at all, monitoring her medication and meals to the minutest detail ever since her husband passed on.
Sundari's daughter-in-law is Kaveri (Madhoo), a woman in her mid-50s, who has no time for herself. She devotes all her waking hours, thoughts and prayers for divine benison to her husband, her son Bala (Bala Suresh) and her cricketer-daughter Niveditha (Santhy Balachandran). She isn't in the habit of expecting anything for herself.
Niveditha, Nivi to friends and family, is on a sticky wicket with her boyfriend Karthik (Dev), who is also a cricketer who cannot see beyond himself and his career. The girl begins to wonder if he is really the guy for her.
With questions swirling all around them and no clear answers in sight, the three women plan a domestic insurrection. The putsch takes the form of an unannounced road trip. Their sudden disappearance catches Kaveri's husband unawares. The journey serves to bring out different facets of the three women, each with a story and a worldview of her own.
Sweet Kaaram Coffee is as much about the present as the past, especially in the context of the loves, longings and losses that the two older women, Kaveri and her feisty mom-in-law, have encountered, and continue to face, in life.
As the unwavering Sundari and the doubt-filled Kaveri grapple with regrets, misgivings, thwarted ambitions and secret aspirations, young Nivi swings between resolve and despair as she deals with a break-up and a new liaison formed during the trip with Bangalore biker Vikram Singh Rathore (Sameer Malhotra), who is on his way to Ladakh with his gang of fellow riders.
The women are on a journey without maps, but the series itself is plotted with clarity to follow the progress of not only the trip but also the women's movement away from old habits and impositions and towards more radical pastures.
The thrilling adventure Sundari, Kaveri and Nivi jump into is fraught with surprises and swerves that are sometimes unnerving, and sometimes enriching.
Kaveri realises that marriage and motherhood have a flip side - a process of learning that is helped along by both Sundari and Nivi, who bring perspectives to the table that Kaveri had learnt to ignore in her pursuit of what she thought was domestic bliss.
Sundari, Kaveri and Nivi, collectively or individually, meet a variety of people on the way. Sundari develops a bond with the sorted Vikram, Kaveri, who once wanted to be a singer, befriends Robert and Julia (Alexx O'Neill and Ayesha Giulia Kapur), two Indophiles on a journey across the country.
Both Sundari and Kaveri also drift close to Vikram. He takes Kaveri on his bike to a classical music guruji's ashram for a brief encounter with a young vocalist (Ritwik Bhowmik in a special appearance that recalls his Bandish Bandits character).
Embellished with a lively score by Govind Vasantha, the Sweet Kaaram Coffee soundtrack is laced with sounds drawn from varied sources, including Amazon Prime Video shows like Bandish Bandits and Four More Shots Please! and Tamil films as well as traditional compositions. It is as free-wheeling as the voyage the three women undertake.
Parts of Sweet Kaaram Coffee are somewhat facile. As the eighth and final episode unfolds, the loose ends are tied up in a manner that is overly pat. The conflicts, the doubts and the missteps that the characters come up against are willed away as if with a magic wand. But the afterglow of the show does not fade because the narrative is peppered with flashes of perspicacity (they linger) and draws strength from sustained performative power.
That latter is, of course, due in no small measure to the presence of Lakshmi. The seasoned actor is outstanding as Sundari. She sets the pace. Hers is a hard act to follow. But Madhoo does a fabulous job of holding her own as a conflicted woman finding her way towards a reawakening of her long-dormant faculties.
Santhy Balachandran is wonderfully self-assured in the company of the two veterans, creating her own little clearings to express herself in the guise of a young woman in love but firmly committed to her cricketing ambition.
Sweet Kaaram Coffee carves out meaningful spaces for several of the supporting actors, notably Sameer Malhotra (as the carefree biker who becomes more than a friend to both Nivi), Sriranjini Prabhu (as the young Sundari) and Padmavati Rao (in a surprise cameo).
Sweet Kaaram Coffee, a brew that is warm, vibrant and likely to have you asking for more, is watchable all the way.
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Lakshmi, Madhoo, Santhy, Vamsi Krishna, Kavin Jay Babu
