Tamil cinema has thrown up several campus stories. College romance? We've seen it. Hostel experiences? That too.
Reminiscing about college life? Bah, been there, done that.
This 'what happens after we get into college' has been chronicled in several on-screen episodes. Selfie, the latest Mathi Maaran directorial starring GV Prakash and Gautham Menon, chooses to explore the 'how we get into college' phase.
Kanal (GV Prakash), from a small town, wants to get into business but his father has only one goal: to see his son as an engineer. He spends a lot of money, even pawning some of his wife's jewels to ensure that Kanal gets a seat in a prestigious college in Chennai. What happens when Kanal realises that the money paid for his seat was actually because of many middlemen and agents involved in the process?
Selfie
And so, sensing a lot of money in it, he becomes an agent himself. What happens when he crosses paths with Ravi Varma (Gautham Menon), whose word is final for everyone involved in the business of education?
As a subject idea, Selfie delves into a subject that is rarely in the public eye, leave alone films. Mathi Maran deserves credit for not only taking it up, but also keeping the screenplay as racy as possible so as to not miss audience interest. However, he misses out on a few counts, especially because of a 'filmi first half' that features a romance that has no place here, and performances that do not always hit the right note.
GV Prakash is a good fit as an angry young college going youngster, but the casting of Gautham Menon seems like a misstep. He looks out of place in unfamiliar mileu, and tries to salvage that by sounding 'local', which does not work most of the time. Vagai Chandrasekar scores as GV Prakash's father, but the romance between the leads is also very perfunctory, with Varsha Bollama's dubbing out of sync.
For a film like this to click, the face-off between the male protagonists needs to have far more depth. The climax also comes across as a rushed job, rather than a detailed one. This Selfie needed more focus.
Published - March 31, 2022 03:57 pm IST
