What's the best gift you can give anyone? Maybe your word — that you will never forget them. But in Three of Us, Pradeep (Jaideep Ahlawat) will smile and accept whatever Shailaja (Shefali Shah) manages to remember.
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. Earlier this year, Celine Song stunned the world with the haunting and heartbreaking Past Lives.
Killa (2014) director Avinash Arun's contemplative return to the Konkan, Three of Us belongs to its own 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). 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.