Starfish movie review: Khushalii Kumar’s film is beautifully shot but needed to dig deeper

Cast: Khushalii Kumar, Milind Soman, Ehan Bhat

Director: Akhilesh Jaiswal

Language: Hindi

There’s something about past traumas and the time they take to heal. Khushalii Kumar’s new film Starfish also reflects the conflict between moving on and dealing with the wounds. She’s a diver named Tara, and the sea becomes a tool, a medium for her to escape from her tumultuous past. It works as a cliffhanger and a metaphor. There’s a bit where she cleans a pond and she could also be cleansing her soul, or rather healing it.

There’s also Milind Soman, an actor with a solid screen presence and someone whose character is bathed in music, meditation, and music. And Khushalii’s dourness gets a reason to exist, but she does come alive at multiple moments in the film, especially when she’s around and in the sea. She’s named Tara, and she derives her happiness from the water, combining star and sea together. What also work for Starfish are the stunning camerawork and smouldering locales. However, what doesn’t work is the rushed reveal of what makes Tara who she is. It feels forced and unfortunately farce.

The film is based on Bina Nayak’s book Starfish Pickle: A Goan Adventure. The central character’s life is trapped between being a spirited creature and a solemn damsel, and Goa becomes one of the characters too as the story progresses, before the story progresses towards Sicily. Starfish mostly succeeds in this aspect, the eye-watering frames compensate for the sporadical blandness in the narrative. And since the sea also plays a major role here since Tara is a diver, it’s impossible not to be reminded of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara. The hero is afraid of the sea, the actress gives her courage, and they both embrace fear and life. But, the montage is not half as effective or effervescent.

Starfish is a mixed bag. The restrain in the storytelling has mostly been done to give the film a brooding mood, but it needed more moments of liveliness and spirit. It needed as much depth as the sea it shows, and as much spark as the name of the central character. But only for the beautiful and breathtaking locales and the severely underrated and underutilized Milind Soman, the film almost manages to sail through. Hallelujah it didn’t drown.

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