The broad premise of a few films holds the promise of venturing into uncharted territories and narrating stories of interest from smaller towns. The Telugu film Yevam, directed by Prakash Dantuluri, is one of them. The director, who shares the writing credits with Divya Narayan, explores a crime drama in the Vikarabad district of Telangana. A serial offender targets women through false advertisements that promise dinner dates and long drives with A-list male stars. What makes this tale interesting is the investigation by a young female police officer, played by an effective Chandini Chowdary, who is eager to prove herself in a patriarchal society. The narrative piques curiosity for a while, even if it is not always absorbing. Later, it goes downhill as the writing gets silly, derailing the initial promise.
An opening crime sequence works as a prologue and hints at the likelihood of a psychopath on the prowl. A little later, the modus operandi plays out. Pamphlets are distributed in the vicinity of a women’s college. Gullible teens are encouraged to scan a QR code and win a chance to meet actor Prabhas for a dinner date. Several questions arise when a student soon finds herself in a hostile situation. Does she not smell something fishy when dropped off at an isolated location? Maybe she is too star-stuck, I reasoned, and waited for things to unravel.
Yevam (Telugu)
Director: Prakash Dantuluri
Cast: Chandini Chowdary, Vasishta Simha, Bharat Raj, Goparaju Ramana.
Storyline: A young female police officer eager to prove herself tries to track down a serial offender who targets women. The search turns out to be more dangerous than she imagined.
The film then shifts to a police station in Vikarabad where Sowmya (Chandini Chowdary) is a new recruit. Her colleagues include an older, friendly constable (Goparaju Ramana) and a grumpy inspector, Abhiram (Bharat Raj). The initial banter indicates Sowmya’s personality — a somewhat naive, amiable, wide-eyed young woman eager to learn. Often taunted at home as unfit for the police force, she yearns to prove them wrong. In a later scene, we understand why she joined the police force and what she hopes to do. Though she seems vulnerable in how she behaves at a crime scene, we also get a sense of her grit.
The first hour plods along on expected lines and sets the stage for the hunting down of a serial offender as more crimes come to the fore. A pre-interval twist steers the narrative in an unexpected direction and a cliffhanger moment. Now and then, there are also character studies of people who inhabit the police station. When an officer asks a colleague if he double-checked whether his daughter is happy with the groom chosen, we assume it comes from a place of respecting women’s choices. But then, not every statement can be judged at its face value.
If only the writing had built on such possibilities with more alacrity. Pieces of the puzzle are deciphered too soon, at least from the audience’s point of view, and Sowmya’s quest for truth does not have the required smartness. There are also several loopholes. For instance, I wondered how Sowmya could pretend to be another young woman and offer to meet the offender— after all, the offender had contacted the young woman through Facebook, and so would have seen her photographs. This possibility never gets mentioned. In a later key sequence, Sowmya does not smell an obvious trap, even though it comes after one of her earlier attempts gets derailed and she is injured.
In the climax when she is aware of the offender being a wolf in sheep’s clothing, she does not have a solid plan of action. The confrontation is silly, to put it mildly. The patchy visual effects, the shifting identities of the criminal and the desperate attempt to paint a psychological portrait of his persona do not work. Now and then, the colour red is used to highlight eeriness and impending danger. The music, too, works in tandem. However, all this effort goes in vain as the narrative loses steam.
Chandini and Goparaju Ramana try to hold things together, but it isn’t enough. Vashista Simha and Bharat Raj’s performances are in line with their characterisations but they too, are let down by the writing. To reveal anything about their characters would turn out to be spoilers.
Yevam could have been a crime drama celebrating an underdog female police officer. But it ends up a pale shadow of what it aimed to be.