Waiting is a character-driven indie film with realistic and emotional connect, but chooses not to dig too deep below the surface of its characters. Primarily set in a state-of-the-art hospital in Cochin, the movie explores how the loved ones of comatose patients deal with their grief.
Young and newly-wed Tara (Kalki Koechlin) rushes to Cochin when she learns of her husband’s road accident there that has left him with a severe head injury. Professor Shiv (Naseeruddin Shah) is a daily visitor at the same hospital; his wife has been in a coma for a few months and he pines for her recovery. Their grief connects Tara and Shiv, giving them both the support they need and, more importantly, a new perspective to deal with their respective tragedies.
Undoubtedly, thespian Naseeruddin Shah is in flawless form. As an elderly and wise person, he sees himself as having reached a later stage of grieving that gives him the calm that young and brash Tara lacks. Effortless as always, Shah establishes the trust-factor of the movie – we truly care for his plight. His understated performance interspersed with a few moments of frustration create character easy to identify with. In contrast, Tara is loud and boisterous, and Kalki‘s portrayal of a regular present-generation extrovert does not always click. She’s at her best when expressing without words, through her eyes or her body language. But her emotional vocal outbursts come across as loud overacting in a movie that did not require histrionics.
There is not much to complain about in the film. Competently written and directed by Anu Menon (London Paris New York), she presents the movie as a light-vein drama; it is not grim or dark, despite its subject matter. It aims for sincerity, with sprinkles of lightheartedness. Waiting is an unpretentious undertaking with modest ambitions. And in that, it genuinely succeeds.
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