Mathukutty Xavier’s Mili turns out to be a frame-by-frame remake of his 2019 Malayalam survival drama, Helen, for which he won the National Film Award for Best Direction. But this Janhvi Kapoor-starrer film is not without some North Indian tadka that makes it a gripping watch.
Survival saga of a small-town girl
Dehradun resident Mili Naudiyal (Janhvi) lives with her father (Manoj Pahwa). She is a nursing graduate and wants to migrate to Canada to be able to help her father financially. Unknown to her father, the girl has a boyfriend, Sameer (Sunny Kaushal). The first half of the film explores Mili’s relationship with the two men in her life. Things take a turn for the worse as Mili gets stuck in the freezer room of the restaurant she works at. With the eatery closed till the next morning, the 24-year-old must struggle to stay alive through the night.
Intense, nerve-wracking drama
The screenplay by Xavier, Alfred Kurian Joseph and Noble Babu Thomas pays minute attention to every detail.
The contrast shown by the sombre silence inside the cold storage and the chaotic cacophony of the search party outside is on point. The transitions are edgy and effective. The dull monotone of the freezer adds to the intensity of the dire state Mili is in.
Ranjith Ambady, who won a National Film Award in Make-up for Helen, once again rises to the occasion to transform Janhvi from a boisterous girl to a pale version of herself, with red marks due to hypothermia. Apurwa Sondhi’s production design converts a mundane cold storage into a mini-warzone, while A.R. Rahman’s terrific background score heightens the dread that the lead has found herself in. The idea to make ambient sounds louder with every passing moment adds to the overall suspense.
Janhvi Kapoor delivers an earnest performance
After Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (2020) and Good Luck Jerry (2022), Janhvi is impressive as the girl-next-door in Mili. She brings to life Mili’s tenacity and perseverance. With little to no dialogue for a large part of the film, Janhvi communicates through her silence. As Mili keeps planning and trying to get out of the freezer, one cannot help but root for her.
A social metaphor
In the Malayalam original, Mili’s boyfriend belonged to a different faith. The makers have settled for an inter-caste relationship in the Hindi version, more in sync with the realities of northern India.
Even while battling the sub-zero temperature inside the freezer, Mili befriends a rat, while her father warms to Sameer, her boyfriend, during the search operations. Mili’s kindness towards an animal is beautifully juxtaposed against her father’s changing perception about a person he previously deemed unequal to him.
The ice-cold setting itself is a metaphor. Mili dreams of moving to Canada, a cold country, where she would need to survive alone. Right before her entrapment, she had had a ‘cold’ war with the two men she loves the most — her father and her boyfriend. The cold freezer aptly represents the odds that Mili needs to overcome.
Janhvi is backed by an able cast
Manoj Pahwa as Mili’s father is like the icing on the cake. He shares a warm chemistry with Janhvi; the duo easily create a strong emotional connection with the audience. Mili's boyfriend, played by Sunny Kaushal, is like your boy-next-door. Both Pahwa and Kaushal display a sense of urgency and desperation in perfect measure as the narrative shifts in the second half. Vikram Kochhar as Mili’s obnoxious manager and Anurag Arora as the unscrupulous police officer play their characters to a T.
