Hot take: Maya

‘Maya’ is a meandering journey into the life of a war reporter who decides that the best therapy for trauma is a visit to Goa. The premise is done to death, but props must be given to the director for not giving in to the Orientalising temptation (by and large). The forbidden love story between the reporter and the younger Indian girl (Aarshi Banerjee) verges on the creepy, and the trope of the older European man healing through her also feels like old news. The lead actress’ stilted performance and the unnatural dialogues in English don’t help the sorry state of affairs, although Roman Kolinka puts in a nuanced performance as the tortured man who doesn’t want to admit he is, giving much-needed heft to this hackneyed plotline. The only evidence of something holding this film together is when a character says “no one world is more real than another”, presumably where the title comes from.

As a story of a man finding himself the film doesn’t really pull its weight, working surprisingly instead as a sort of ode to a Goa that is fast disappearing to land-grabbing property developers, hippies and mafia. The best moments in this film are tableaux of this old way of life: playing football in an overgrown garden with the neighbour’s kids, attending midnight mass in Konkani and dancing to the kitschy carols after, watching the birds in the sky, exploring old ruins and listening to the sounds of the waves on secluded beach. This film is made with all heart, but still lacks soul.

Genre: Drama

Language: English/French Runtime: 1h 47min Year of release: 2018 Streaming Platform: N/A

Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.