2 Stars (out of 4)
“Merry Christmas” was filmed simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil. This is a review of the Hindi version.
Something got lost in Merry Christmas‘s translation from page to screen. The mystery doesn’t quite work, due in no small part to a miscast lead duo.
Director Sriram Raghavan’s latest thriller is an adaptation of French author Frédéric Dard’s novel Bird in a Cage. Set in “Mumbai when it was called Bombay,” the story follows a fateful meeting between two mysterious strangers on Christmas Eve.
Albert (Vijay Sethupathi) returns to his mother’s apartment for the first time in years after working abroad. Mom died a while ago, and her walker still stands next to the bed, as if waiting for its user to return.
He goes to a fancy restaurant and watches a man ditch a beautiful woman, Maria (Katrina Kaif), and her little daughter, Annie (Pari Maheshwari Sharma), in the middle of dinner. Intrigued, Albert follows mother and child to the movies. When Annie falls asleep, Albert offers to carry her home.
Maria invites Albert in for a drink and puts on some music to set the mood while she puts Annie to bed. Christmas tunes, surely. Or maybe something seductive? Nope, Maria puts on “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg.
This sequence in Maria’s apartment is where the film lost me. Besides the weird musical choice — which is explained later, though not exactly why that particular piece of music needed to be used — the apartment is lit so brightly from above that it looks like the set of a TV sitcom. The unnatural lighting makes a goofy sequence in which Albert and Maria dance to holiday tunes look downright bizarre.
It’s a shame since building interiors are otherwise one of the film’s strongest suits. The decor in the restaurant and theater are gorgeous. The wallpaper in Maria’s apartment is seriously stunning.
This is also the point in the movie where we should start to get a sense of who Albert and Maria are and what they might want from each other. Yet there is zero chemistry between Sethupathi and Kaif, so it’s hard to tell. They both look like they are just going through the motions.
The problem really is just the two of them together. In a flashback scene opposite Radhika Apte, Sethupathi is an entirely different actor. And I’ve seen Kaif in enough films to know she’s capable of much better with the right partner.
The disconnect between the two leads makes the first half of the film crawl until a suspicious death resets the pace and raises questions. Unfortunately, the renewed tempo doesn’t last for long, slowed again by acting that feels flat.
When the truth of what is happening is revealed, it lacks a sense of inevitability. I suspect there are details that might have stood out more in the book that weren’t emphasized visually in the film. Rather than ending with the audience saying, “Aha!” Merry Christmas ends with an “Okay.”
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