Memory is a trenchant theme for any story, both in literature and cinema. If done well, it cuts deep. The Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón took his own and arranged them into the ultimate screen autobiography of all times, Roma (2019). The Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul wielded it in his winding 2021 opus, Memoria. Killa (2014) director Avinash Arun’s contemplative return to the Konkan, Three of Us belongs to its own very league. It stars Shefali Shah, who needs little more than her peepers to make you choke (and I did, no less than thrice during my watching of it).Three of Us 2023 Full Movie Download
She plays Shailaja, a middle-aged Mumbaikar, who asks her husband Dipankar (Swanand Kirkire) to accompany her on a trip to Vengurla, a sleepy hamlet in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg. The mild-mannered life insurance agent obliges, even though he is used to making his wife get off the dinner table for salt that he needs. They land up in the scenic village where she spent four years as a young girl.In Vengurla, Shailaja quietly reunites with her band of childhood friends, who seem to have little difficulty in recognising her 28 years after they last saw her. Shailaja, visiting her childhood sweetheart Pradeep at the local bank where he is an employee, gets her name on a piece of paper handed to him. Gobsmacked at first as the torrent of memories hits him (thankfully, without cheesy flashbacks that mainstream films employ), Pradeep, played by a terrific Jaideep Ahlawat, agrees to Shailaja’s unspoken and abrupt demand for a reunion. A harmonious, unassuming finale to the halcyon days of their lives.And so, they tour this physical palimpsest of her fragile memory together, hitting up their old haunts and catching up on the past. Pradeep’s characterisation is excellent — a man who does not trust other men easily, and contrary to his towering stature and robust countenance, writes and embroiders to process his emotions. The same is true of Dipankar, whose subtle generosity both mirrors and transcends that of Arthur (John Magaro), the lead protagonist’s husband contending with her past in Past Lives, the film that Three of Us will at first remind you of. But that’s where the similarity ends.