Listen... Amaya Hindi Movie

Feature Film | 2013 | Drama
Critics:
Listen... Amaya has it all to make for a relative contemporary story on human relations but sadly it disappoints due to its amateurish treatment.
Jan 31, 2013 By Mansha Rastogi


How would you feel if you went to see a film and knew the moral of the story even before the story itself could unfurl? And how would you feel if the moral then kept reiterating itself every ten minutes? Avinash Kumar Singh's film Listen... Amaya suffers from similar pattern. Pitted against prominent films like David, Vishwaroop and Midnight's Children, the film has dismal chances of making it big. Here's a concise review.


Leela Krishnamoorthy (Deepti Naval), a middle-aged widow, runs a cozy little coffee shop within her house called Book A Coffee. Her life pretty much revolves around her coffee shop and her daughter Amaya (Swara Bhaskar), a full time writer and part time helper to her mother. Despite having a great bond with her doting daughter, Leela feels the lack of a companion in her life. Enters Jayant Sinha (Farooque Shaikh), a jolly and interesting retired photographer who befriends Leela. Soon their friendship blossoms into a strong bond as Leela starts inclining more and more towards him. However, this doesn't go down well with Amaya according to whom her mother is betraying her dead father by replacing his place by somebody else. How Amaya comes to terms with her mother's needs is what follows through the rest of the plot.


The title of the film pretty much like the treatment of the story is very uninspiring. Listen...Amaya has all ingredients to make for an emotionally stirring roller-coaster ride but sadly the film succumbs under the novice hands of the debutant filmmaker. The film takes off on a sugary note and the mother daughter relationship tugs at your heart but no soon after the major conflict arises does the filmmaker lose his grip too.


The complexities of human relations are handled beautifully in some occasions but they are few and far in between. In the rest of the cases, sequences keep repeating in circles every ten minutes and the emphasis on platonic love or the need of a companion is reinforced in your head.


Avinash Kumar Singh scores an ace at least in one department - casting. There couldn't have been a better onscreen pair than Farooque Shaikh and Deepti Naval to portray a beautiful relationship. The way the two express their emotions and portray their characters is simply brilliant. Swara Bhaskar on the other hand is quite uneven, in most cases she is a grumpy young girl while in the rest an over the top 'free-spirited' woman. While she handles some scenes well, in some she goes completely haywire almost to the point of annoyance.


To sum it up, Listen...Amaya had it all to make for a relative contemporary story on human relations but sadly it disappoints due to its amateurish treatment.

Mansha Rastogi

   

MOVIE REVIEWS