Movie Review: Good Night | Good Morning

Can a movie set around a telephone call be just as engaging and emotionally enriching? Set in Big Apple during the New Year's Eve, Good Night | Good Morning, directed by Sudhish Kamath, film critic for The Hindu, explores the different stages of relationships people go through, via a split-screen telephonic conversation between two strangers Turia Omprakash (Manu Narayan) and Moira (Seema Rahmani). Turia, having spotted her and her hotel number in a New York bar, decides to give her a call while he is on his way to Philadelphia with his gang of inebriated friends.

Thus begins a witty and nightlong conversation that ends up as a catharsis, releasing all the 'excess baggage' in their life. The exchange that begins casually by discussing movies (genuinely funny!), slowly turns into a jovial boy-girl banter before landing onto the topic of relationships. While the romantic Turia (out of Mills & Boons novels) is still nursing wounds from a broken relationship, Moira claims to have successfully closed her past loves and is quite a cynic. But both realize that, despite their differences, they need a comforting company and manage to open their dark secrets to one another however difficult it may be to talk about them.

Notwithstanding the unconventional plot device, Sudhish shoots almost the entire movie in black-and-white, which gets a dose of colour (aka life) when the leads recount their past. Also, the scriptwriters (Sudhish and Shilpa Rathnam) do a great job of sustaining the interest for a movie that entirely hinges on conversations. The writing is clever, original and at the same time makes some hard-hitting comments on relationships (Clear your inbox is one of the best lines ever!). The straight-talking characters are equally engaging and the leads, Manu and Seema, share a terrific chemistry in spite of the physical distance between them, getting into the skin of the characters effortlessly.