Easily the most "Western" of the three Indian films I've seen so far this year, "Anaamika" does not feature any fourth-wall shattering musical numbers, but it still had enough stylistic flourishes to set it apart from the type of cinema I'm used to seeing.
The film had a good pace and didn't have any moments where it felt like it was running long. It follows the title character, an Indian immigrant to America, who returns to India to track down her missing husband, who she believes is in danger. The film begins with a terrorist attack, the relevance of which does not become evident until the second half of the film. Anaamika comes into contact with many people, some more helpful to her than others, as she seeks to unravel the mystery behind her husband's disappearance. The story takes quite a few twists along the way, none of them groundbreaking or entirely surprising, but it was enough to maintain my interest throughout.
Like others I've seen, this was a foreign film that probably benefitted from having stylistic elements that I am not used to seeing and am thus more easily entertained and amused by. The primary instance in this film was the use of its musical score. While there were no outright musical numbers like in the other Indian films I've seen, the score was very bombastic. Oftentimes when a character would say a particularly dramatic line or a surprising turn of events would take place, the music would flare up like in a parody of a soap opera (dun-dun-DUN). While this would have seemed ridiculous in most American made films striving for drama, I was able to overlook and even enjoy it here. The plot on its own was nothing that would be out of place or exceptional in American cinema, so it helped that the film managed to stand out in other ways.
The other most notable aspect of the film for me has nothing to do with the filmmaking itself, but with its presentation. Any time a character would be smoking or drinking, a small anti-smoking or anti-alcohol logo would appear in the lower left portion of the screen. Short anti-smoking commercials also played both before the film and during its intermission (all the Indian films I've seen have had intermissions despite their normal length--I'm told that they do actually take a break in India, but at the screenings I've been to they go straight into the second part). These logos didn't bother me as much as they should have. They would have really made me mad in a regular film, but in this case I viewed them as a cultural curiosity. I've done some research since and found that these warnings are required for all films shown in India. Some films like "Blue Jasmine" and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" were never even released in India since Woody Allen and David Fincher refused to allow the warnings into their films. Not that I blame them.
"Anaamika" isn't a great film, but it is competently made, and aspects of its foreign production were still fresh enough to me to elevate it a bit.
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