Telugu cinema strikes the eye once again with the bilingual film Naan Ee directed by S. S. Rajamouli. The movie starts with a kid asking his father to tell him a story. The father tells him the story of Naan Ee.
When young Nani meets the attractive Bindu by chance, it's love at first sight. Eyes exchange and a game of seduction begins to emerge, soon to give birth to a pure and sincere love. How cute. Except that life is not just about winks, rose petals and smiles filmed in slow motion. Life is also a beautiful bitch who never misses an opportunity to kick you in the balls.
And Nani will learn this brutally when he is murdered by Sudeep, a rich entrepreneur who has also set his sights on Bindu. The fact remains that death is not an end in itself and our combative Nani soon reincarnates as a fly! Eager to protect Bindu, but also to take revenge, the insect trains hard and decides to go to war against the infamous Sudeep.
If monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) have preferred resurrection and the last judgment, other beliefs mostly rely on a reincarnation of the immaterial Being. Today, one person in seven believes in reincarnation. It must be said that the concept is quite attractive and allows us to consider death as a new beginning.
From the point of view of writers or scriptwriters, it also opens quite a few doors. But let's be honest, the case of Naan Ee is a bit special since for the first time, it is a question here of a hero reincarnated as a fly! We have known sexier as a protagonist. The actor Naveen Babu Ghanta (Nani for his friends) had the profile of the young leading man but destiny will decide for him and the computer-generated images will therefore take over after about thirty minutes.
Our fly will therefore be 100% digital, with a correct rendering quality, superior to what Indian films usually offer us. Fortunately, because beyond the insect, computer-generated images are very regularly featured in Naan Ee. Bullet-time effects, car accidents, explosions, objects crossing the screen.
SS Rajamouli's film is extremely generous and only the birth of the fly and the sequence that follows leave something to be desired visually. The viewer will feel it, and the involvement will be less during these ten minutes.
But isn't it curious to talk about involvement when we evoke the link between a vengeful fly and an individual peacefully installed in a movie theater or, more surely, on his sofa? No, not so much. And that is the real tour de force of this Naan Ee with its completely crazy bet: Making a fly a credible character in a "Live" action film.
A vengeful, determined, lively and resourceful hero. A weak being who will push his own limits until he becomes the grain of sand in the cogs, the balls in the soup or, of course, the fly in the milk. Nani is all that and each of his new attempts will make the viewer's eyes widen.
We burst out laughing in front of this insect flexing its little body, we rejoice when it utters threats and we applaud it when it carries them out! Against all odds, the alchemy works perfectly and the viewer becomes attached to this fly as he would with a John McClane or one of the many vigilantes played by Charles Bronson .
For this feat alone, Naan Ee and its director deserve to be commended. But as we have said, the experience does not stop there and the film is extremely generous in what it offers. SS Rajamouli clearly plays the action movie card and if the sequences are crazy, they are no less effective.
The pace is extremely sustained, the situations often tense and the madness builds up to a truly mind-blowing finale, a true apocalypse on the scale of this insect as destructive as it is motivated! The trailer for the film is quite revealing in this respect but in reality it only scratches the surface of the content.
We will also have to take into account demonic birds, monstrous pyrotechnic effects and plot twists that are quite capable of keeping us on the edge of our seats.
We will also salute the "human" dimension of the film. First of all, the actor Naveen Babu Ghanta who during the first part of the film breathes the essential energy into his character. He is the guy who, for thirty minutes, will shape the character of the hero in the making in the mind of the viewer.
It is clear that he fulfills his contract perfectly and that beyond the digital fly, it is indeed the smiling and madly in love young man that we feel vibrating. We understand him all the more since his heart beats only for Bindu, played by the ravishing Samantha Ruth Prabhu.
Here again, the performance is notable and the actress maintains an emotional connection as improbable as it is touching. But who could resist such a look? Certainly not the "Bad Guy" of the story, played here by the actor Kiccha Sudeep, overacting somewhat but ultimately very tasty in his bursts of pure madness!
In the end, Naan Ee clearly appears to us as a must-see film. It is certainly not THE action film of the moment, nor is it a monstrously funny comedy. But it is a bit of all that and also offers real energy carried by sympathetic actors and a premise as delirious as it is mastered.
Naan Ee will therefore carry you away for 134 minutes, without it being felt. On the contrary, the more the film progresses, the more its potential explodes, ending with a magnificent opening sequence, a dance of flies choreographed in the pure tradition of Indian cinema. Bliss!
Let's end by specifying that although dealing with Naan Ee, this review is also valid for Makkhi. Also, the film was shot simultaneously in Telugu version (Eega) and Tamil version (Naan Ee). The casting is the same, whether in front of or behind the camera. Many sequences are taken from one film to the other and only the dialogue scenes were redone in both languages. In the end, there is less than a minute difference between the two versions.
