The first-ever crowd funded Kannada film, Lucia is clearly experimental not just with its financing but its storytelling too.
Director Pawan Kumar deals the audience a mystery with a surprise end and all in 135 minutes.
The film opens with Nikki (Ninasam Satish) lying comatose in a hospital. The police are investigating a case and a detective is looking through various files anxiously. An orange coloured pill Lucia is the cause of Nikki's serious condition.
Nikki, an insomniac, is an usher at a theatre run by his guru-cum-adviser Shankaranna (Achyuth Kumar). Hoping Lucia will cure his insomnia, he has it and it takes him into a dream world where he is a movie star adored by the audiences. Here he falls for Shweta (Shruti Hariharan), a young actress.
Back to reality, Nikki is struck by love when he spots a young girl who works at a pizza chain. As the hero and the heroine, they need to face villains and so enter the baddies who demand money from Nikki, the star. The real Nikki, the usher is tortured by villains who want to take over Shankaranna's cinema hall.
How Nikki's family tries to bring him back to reality is revealed with an unexpected ending.
Pawan Kumar's script is tight and dialogues sharp and witty. He has tried to invent an unusual satire. While the narrative is kept simple, non-linear storyline confuses.
The different shades of a life shown through an usher and a hero have been well-balanced but left unexplained. Characters come and go with such bewildering speed that it becomes difficult for the audience to keep track of the story and it jumps around enough to induce some motion sickness. The film has been robbed of its poetry and emotions by science and technology, though the casting is good.
Nevertheless, the film will earn appreciation from those who are willing to invest time in the roller coaster ride. Buoyed by Satish, Shruthi Hariharan and Achyuth Kumar's performances, the film proceeds as a series of vignettes and some of them are unforgettable.
Siddarth Nuni's superb mobile camerawork and good music by Poornachandra Tejaswi all contribute to a movie that proves that you neither need a huge budget or CGI to create fiction that leaves you to your imagination.
The special effects of the black and white and colour scenes come up with exciting and inventive results.
In trying to keep up the mystery, Pawan has maintained stability in the first half but has stretched the second part.
Verdict: A mutliplex film cinema for the intellectuals as it leaves cinegoers in Gandhinagar scratching their heads.
DIRECTOR: Pawan Kumar
CAST: Satish Ninasam, Shruthi Hariharan and Achyut Kumar
