Christy HD Released

 

As respected literary figures, Benyamin and GR Indugopan have a responsibility to depict characters with some concern for current circumstances. Christy, which is apparently based on a true story, tells of the lengths a young boy goes for love. In today’s society, where the lengths that boys go to for unrequited love has had shockingly fatal consequences, the message conveyed by the film is questionable, and perhaps not even acceptable.

Mathew Thomas portrays Roy, an academically weak student, who needs the help of tuition teacher Christy, essayed in a heartfelt manner by the lovely Malavika Mohanan, to help him pass his Plus Two exams. She is a divorcee, with a profligate father, and with stifling conditions at home, she moves to Maldives on a teaching job.

Meanwhile, young Mathew, who calls Christy ‘chechi’, falls in love with her and tells her he wants to marry her. The fact that she doesn’t say an outright ‘no’, makes him consider it a ‘yes’ and the rest of the story is about how he tries to be with her.

While it is not badly made, with beautiful cinematography by Anend C Chandran, good music by Govind Vasantha and all round faultless acting, there are a few disagreeable things about the movie, with story and direction by Alvin Henry. Even if we accept that a lot of people do stupid, wild things for love in their youth; in hindsight, they are considered stupid, wild things and shouldn’t be considered worthy of making the empathetic core of a movie. Then again, the movie could have been seen as a poignant, youthful romance, such as Call Me By Your Name, but it lacks emotional depth. There are no meaningful, touching conversations between Roy and Christy that make us root for them. In fact, Christy has that tragic heroine quality - once again it has to be mentioned that it was essayed with subtle beauty by Malavika - that could have been used to really lift the story. Not to mention, the film and the excruciating finale, particularly, felt too long drawn out.

Also, the title hardly justifies the film, which is totally told from Roy’s rather than Christy’s point of view. And if the issue was that the title Roy was already taken, it could have been A Boy’s Immature Attempts At Romance or Boy, Learn To Take A No.