india

The Pool (Director: Chris Smith): Documentary film­maker Chris Smith (American Movie, The Yes Men) makes his return to nar­rative storytelling with this modest film set in Goa, an area of India known for its beach resorts. Venkatesh is a young “room boy” working for a hotel who spies a seem­ingly vacant hol­iday house with a shim­mering swim­ming pool. He becomes obsessed with finding out who lives in the house and is determ­ined to work his way into their lives so he can swim in the pool. His life is hard; he and his young friend Jhangir work sev­eral jobs, including a gig where they re-sell plastic bags at the market to make some extra cash. They’ve come here from their vil­lage to make a living, and neither can read or write, having long given up hope of ever attending school. It’s touching to see their friend­ship, con­sid­ering that Venkatesh is 18 and Jhangir only 10. The younger boy is more like a little brother, although he’s easily as street­wise as Venkatesh.

One day Venkatesh notices a man sit­ting in a chair by the pool, and over the next few days, from his vantage point in a nearby tree, he real­izes there’s also a beau­tiful young woman living there. When he sees the man tending his garden and scolding the girl for not helping him, he springs into action. Although he can’t read, he buys a book on gardening and has a co-worker at the hotel read it to him. With his new-found know­ledge of plants, he fol­lows the man to a local garden centre and offers his help bringing sup­plies back to his home. Although the man doesn’t talk much, Venkatesh gradu­ally insinu­ates him­self into steady work in the garden of the house. He’s intrigued by the fact that no one ever seems to go into the pool, and by the ten­sion between the man and (as it turns out) his daughter.

He and Jhangir also follow the daughter, Ayesha, as she takes a daily walk to the park to read her book, and soon they are bringing her lunch and inviting her on adven­tures. Although she seems lazy and spoiled when we first meet her, we soon realize that Ayesha is just bored, and is also car­rying the scorn of her father for some unex­plained misdeed.

Soon Venkatesh has charmed both father and daughter and the mys­tery of the pool is revealed, leading to an incred­ibly moving and sur­prising conclusion.

Smith’s doc­u­mentary back­ground serves him well. Nothing feels staged here, and he coaxes incred­ibly nat­ural per­form­ances from his mostly non­pro­fes­sional cast (who get to use their real names). Scenes are gen­er­ally short and com­mu­nicate just enough inform­a­tion to keep the story moving for­ward. Though the cam­er­a­work is a bit shaky, it added a sense of reality to the film, as if we were almost spying on the action. Incredibly, though the film was shot in Hindi, in addi­tion to it not being under­stood by the dir­ector, it wasn’t the first lan­guage of the two main child actors. Nor could they speak English, or read. So the chal­lenges facing the pro­duc­tion seemed incred­ibly tough, though I think anyone would agree that the end result was worth it.

I haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire yet, but I’m cer­tain that this small film has more heart and more reality than the Oscar-winner. And though in a per­fect world the suc­cess of Danny Boyle’s film would benefit The Pool, I worry that this gem of a story will be over­looked. Don’t let it happen.

Official site of the film

The Pool opened on Friday April 3rd at the Cumberland theatre in Toronto.

(9/10)

Tagged as: goa, india

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