Film review: 20 minutes too long…

Sole Search is flimsy around the edges with dud somewhere in the middle.

ISLAMABAD: Slackistan alumni Shabaz Shigri and Ayshea Akhtar channel their ex-pat’s gaze to ground most banal in their new short film, Sole Search. Unfortunately for such a youthful industry, the short is flimsy around the edges with dud somewhere in the middle.

Screened at Kuch Khaas on Wednesday, the filmmaking duo brings us a damp squib that is more hype than heart. In this offering we are subjected to at least a purported appearance of what goes in one of the main markets of the city, Jinnah Super.

The protagonist Sameer, played by Salmaan Ahmed Shaukat, who leads us through this farrago, is a non-resident himself, out in the market hunting for a pair of Nike shoes. His frustration at not finding a pair is picked up upon by a local salesman and market regular, Candy, played by Ali Rehman.

This sobriquet only person is an archetypical ‘Jinnah Boy’, a gadfly; more cheese than class.

The fateful meeting between the two leads to Candy hounding his customer into buying something. Sameer’s repeated refusals are taken by Candy’s boss as a customer clearly dissatisfied. He fires Candy as a result.

Sameer feels guilty about the incident and offers Candy some recompense, to which Candy agrees but insists that he first ‘run an errand’.  This errand includes meeting fellow Jinnah Boy Prince who does not take very kindly to Sameer owing to his ‘ABCD’ provenance.

The duo then proceed to revel in some low brow, off colour humour , followed by a working man rant, a tender moment thrown in to show that Candy is not entirely an abstract, a completely arbitrary mugging, street wisdom and a bizarre volte face all in 20 minutes. The end.

What does one make of such a mess? Pointless to the point of being irrelevant, the film says nothing, goes nowhere and is as aimless as a circuit of the veritable Jinnah Super Gol Market itself. It has featherweight emotion, is beguiling at times and contributes nothing to the canon of Islamabad.

It almost does a disservice to the city. The market though indeed populated by such Jinnah Boys does not as a regular feature have patrons badgered or battered, nor camping out on the foot walks without a home to go to (Sameer basically sits around the market where once he actually wanted to buy shoes) – fiction having quite a field day with reality.

Of course, in all fairness, this a work of fiction  and dramatic license is entirely permissible, but excess is the greatest excess, and the caricature of Candy, is without offence, exactly the impression from on high that one assumes perched on a pedestal.

One feels an air of looking down the nose with Candy’s character, laughing at him rather than with him, such market regulars more petit bourgeoisie than Candy’s Basti dweller.

Ali Rehman’s performance is hard to appreciate, not because of the effort, which is considerable but because it is so exaggerated, it borders on the insipid. Salmaan Ahmad Shaukat exhibits as much range as a plank of wood, his non-existent expression almost evident of a script by rote, a true neophyte. Saad Rehman Khan is possibly the most convincing as Prince, but this may be because he is present in small doses.

If the quibble of the film’s title proposes a possible self-discovery, a film with a message and so on, one sees no development of the lead, his abrupt transformation at the end, bizarre and silly.

Candy is shown to regress, facets of the character gradually revealed, appreciable but amounting to nothing. The dialog though with an ear to the street, sometimes becomes too much, the accompanying subtitles laughable.

Popular ditties are added as the soundtrack to tepid effect. If there is a shred of direction in this movie, one would gladly invite evidence of it, the screenplay and screenwriter, tangential, unchecked. In summation, one is neither spectator nor participant to this film, one simply does not care. It is that forgettable.

One admits that this is a first attempt and in no way is one discouraging but the attention and appreciation that the film has apparently received is undeserved and disingenuous.

It demonstrates a sheer lack of taste and discernment, possibly only welcomed among the juvenile, very similar in reception to another short that is making the rounds, The Pharmacist.  One hopes that this sophomore attempt will be followed by more mature future projects.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1^st, 2011.