Halitha Shameem’s ambitious ‘Minmini’ has a handful of good scenes, but the overall film isn’t satisfying

This is a blunt movie. Barring a few scenes, the delicacy we associate with Halitha’s work is missing.

Minmini opens in a boarding school in Ooty. A teacher walks into a classroom and sees a beautiful chalk drawing on the blackboard. She needs to get on with class, but she doesn’t have the heart to erase this drawing. (“Idha azhikka manasu varala,” she says.) So she asks a student to erase it. This is a trademark Halitha Shameem vignette, a little scene that reveals a little bit not just about this teacher-character but also about something larger: sometimes, you cannot bring yourself to destroy something beautiful, even if it’s necessary to do that in order to move on. The USP of Minmini is that of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, that the director waited for youngsters to grow up, so that the same actors could play themselves eight years older. But the USP is really Halitha’s sensibility. Even if different actors had played these characters as youngsters and as grown-ups, Halitha’s sensibility would have held this scene together.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://www.galattaplus.com/halitha-shameems-ambitious-minmini-has-a-handful-of-good-scenes-but-the-overall-film-isnt-satisfying/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

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