A woman grieving the end of a relationship repairs to her family home in the Kulu Valley in search of new beginnings. Subhadra Mahajan’s directorial debut expands its one-line premise in fulfilling and at times poignant ways.
The dancer Nia’s heartache is evident in her tendency to huddle under her sheets rather than step outside the house to take in the magnificent view of the snow-covered mountains. Twinkly-eyed caretaker Bhemi (Thakri Devi) and her sparky grandson Sunny (Kanav Thakur) coax Nia (Dheera Johnson) out of her misery, as does the landscape itself.
Sunny is especially cute since he’s not trying to be. From kissing his dead mother’s photo to chatting away with himself, Sunny is an unselfconscious free spirit. A cuddly kitten pops up too, another sign for Nia that life must go on. But she struggles to overcome her melancholia, or simply be with herself.
Second Chance is being screened in the Indian Cinema Now section at the International Film Festival of Kerala. The narrative is sharpest in its therapeutic aspects. Climate change, which can ruin the natural beauty that contributes to Nia’s healing, looms in the background.
Swapnil S Sonawane’s lustrous black-and-white palette focuses the eye on the faces and the locations, while also bringing out the starkness of Nia’s sadness. The movie’s interweave of observational humour and a spiritual quest for solace are at times reminiscent of Doris Dorrie’s similarly monochrome Greetings from Fukushima (2016), about the bond between a heartbroken female clown and a geisha against the ruins of a nuclear catastrophe.
A few hiccups mar the sensitive portrayal of a young woman’s distress. While Thakri Devi and Kanav Thakur are compelling as the concerned locals, Dheera Johnson doesn’t have the acting heft to pull off Nia’s anguish.
Nia is helped by people who are being paid to take care of her – a class factor that goes unremarked. Some of the latter portions feel too crammed with incidents. Despite these first-film flounderings, Second Chance makes a strong case for itself and the prospects of its debutant director.
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