Decoupled
Creator: Manu Joseph
Director: Hardik Mehta
Cast: R Madhavan, Surveen Chawla
Netflix’s latest offering, Decoupled, written by Manu Joseph and helmed by Hardik Mehta, it is a no-holds-barred look at Indian society with its blatant hypocrisy and elaborate efforts to hide the warts and moles. About a couple who are on the verge of breaking up, but living under the same roof for the sake of their teenage daughter, the work is a celebration of separation, of their decoupling process.
But this forms a mere backdrop, which Joseph uses to spook Indian society, and he does this with a mix of gutsy humour and sarcasm. I wonder whether Decoupled could have made it to the cinemas, given our rigid censor rules. But there you are with a peppy piece of work, a series split into eight episodes or chapters, each with a title.
In the very first, we see a couple – R Madhavan, a celebrated pulp fiction writer, Arya Iyer, and his wife, Shruti (Surveen Chawla) – squabbling. Both are toying with their wedding rings, a loud indicator of things to come. But happily, Decoupled is no serious, weepy drama, but an extremely lighthearted look at marital relationship, and, more importantly, about how Arya puts his foot in his mouth every time he relates to others. His ex-girlfriend is livid when he expresses shock at her unclean underarms!
At another time, his phobia pushes him to squirm at the thought of shaking hands with a young boy. “You know what they do at this age, and never wash up,” he tells the boy’s father, a Bengali ‘bhadrolok’ and intellectual immersed in the works of Amartya Sen.
But when Arya’s daughter, Rohini (Arista Mehta), posts a Twitter message on her father’s account about how a neighbour and his wife treat their maid, the author becomes a different kind of celebrity.
There is a hilarious scene when Iyer rearranges his books with Chetan Bhagat’s n a store, giving himself the number one position on the rack. Bhagat is behind him, and catches him red-handed. There is another rip-roaring sequence when cops catch him for drunk driving and punish him by ordering him to stand on a chair at a busy intersection and salute every passing vehicle.
Madhavan, probably in his first ever comedic role, really enlivens the series – sometimes with a deadpan expression, sometimes with a twinkle in his eye. He is really a boy, and there is something disarmingly innocent about him, compared with Shruti. She takes life way too seriously, and is always at loggerheads with her hubby.
But Joseph does not turn his work into some kind of a husband-wife tiff. A lovely touch of lighthearted feel permeates through the series, whose first five episodes are are not only witty but scathing. Madhavan sinks into his character with exemplary ease, mouthing his lines much in the same way that Woody Allen does with a deadpan, but adorable expression.
However, the tone and feel of the last three episodes move away from comedy, and they are not very good. The irreverent mood is lost, and with it a certain appeal. Joseph probably ran out of ideas, and Mehta could not keep them flying.
But, all said and done, Decoupled is fun most of the way, and produces a hearty laugh especially because of Madhavan’s naughtiness, some of which, I must say, are taunting arrows laced with dollops of humour.
(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator and movie critic who has been covering celebrated film festivals like Cannes, Venice and Tokyo among others)
