Unlike anything you’ve seen before

Its weirdness quotient is high but its determination to defy the established practices of Bollywood storytelling sits quite nicely in Karan Gaur’s second narrative feature. Fairy people. The strange and provocative magic realist film is in the here and now – in the home of a married couple – even as it frantically weaves its way into unknown territory.

Dealing with one of the oldest themes known to cinema – the man-woman relationship in the institution of marriage – Gaur and her two exceptionally accomplished leads, real-life couple Rasika Dugal and Mukul Chadha, deliver a free-flowing and affecting dissection of a marital union gone off the rails. And struggling to rekindle that earlier spark.

More funky than wild, more rock-solid than hardcore trippy, Fairy people Spirit, independent of origin in matter and execution. To cap it all, it’s not the least bit self-aware of the way it creates a marriage story that moves into a territory where anything is possible as the actors are free to let their instincts take over as they wish and the script, written by Gaur herself, is plenty for innovation. There is space.

Gaur’s first film, was critically acclaimed decay (2011), was also set within the constraints of a marriage. Using understated, even understated, methods, it explored a woman’s desire for something beyond her and her husband’s means. Fairy Folk continues in much the same vein, adding a streak of wildly creative adventure to the Enterprise. It’s a delightfully unexpected exercise that draws its strength from a story that pushes boundaries and a cast that goes with the flow.

Gaur, a music composer and sound designer whose credits (besides his own decay) include NH10 and Titli, carries his sense of rhythm to Fairy Folk. This is reflected not only in the way the film unfolds but also in the number with which he studs the soundtrack.

The way Dugal and Chadda, an urban couple in India speak in a mixture of English and Hindi, is simply outstanding. They do a great job of adding subtle and profoundly confusing layers to their performances built on the unexpected turns their unexpected relationship takes.

Hrithik (Dugal) and Mohit (Chadda) run into a ‘creature’ on a deserted street in Mumbai – the utter solitude of a megacity is itself a conceit that can only exist in a state of wondrous nature. The creature has human form, has no genitalia, does not move unless touched, and eats mud and worms. All this until Mohit starts drawing entities out of his stony stupor.

Although the actors – the supporting cast includes Nikhil Desai as the silent creature (there comes a point when ‘it’ breaks into perfectly intelligible Hindi) and Asmeet Pathare and Chandrachur Rai – are seen to thrive as they go along, standing above everything else in Fairy. In Folk the logic of the words they say, their actions and the many changes they go through.

Ritika and Mohit encounter strange creatures when their car breaks down, forcing them to abandon their private car and hail a cab online – another metaphor for a couple breaking out of a familiar, comfortable space. The entity followed the couple home.

Breakdown is the operative word here because it’s not just a car that has stalled. The unexpected and unlikely circumstances that force Ritika and Mohit to face a reality that stares them in the face outside of their safe haven – of course they have no way of knowing what they’re in for – is the turning point. the story

It happens at the very beginning of the film but the shadow that the encounter casts continues throughout the film. The animal that comes into the house is the elephant in the house that Hrithik and Mohit can no longer ignore. But do they really know what is missing from their lives and what they need to address it?

It’s not clear until about a third of the way into Fairy Folk that falling into the trap of a dead habit is about a light wedding. It disrupts in a way that neither the onscreen couple nor the audience can imagine or immediately understand. The film continues to defy expectations and thrive.

On the face of it, there seems to be nothing seriously wrong with the couple although there is a clear coldness that has developed in how they interact with each other on a daily basis. Their words give an air of weariness. Contact between the two seems to ricochet off a solid penetrating wall and then hang invisibly in the air around them.

It is at night and in the middle of nowhere that Ritika and Mohit find themselves face to face with something that completely shakes their existence. Genuine affection and passion – two traits that have come out of their lives – are pitchforked in a series of touching and spontaneous discussions that stop the two from being.

It takes the support of a pair of wonderfully unflappable performances and a supporting cast keenly aware of the confusing direction the story is moving to shape the anti-story at the heart of Gowre’s brilliantly flexible, fiercely uncompromising approach. Fairy people.