First love!

I took upon an invitation to watch this movie at Jai Nepal. This was my second Nepali movie after “Sano Sansar”. I was not very impressed back then either, but I solaced myself because it was a commendable effort from the Kollywood fraternity and the sound track was also hum-worthy.

However, this movie – First love, does have its share of quirks that really bothered me. The plot is nondescript; much inspired by a plethora of plots, the most prominent being the last American virgin.

Following the very introduction of the protagonists in the movie, I said to myself, “Sh*t, I have seen this before!”

The protagonists, walk the walk and talk the talk like any college going youngster who is prone to binge drinking and blurting out insurmountable amounts of “NEnglish”(Nepali mixed with English). At other times they disburse a steady stream of English sans prepositions. These same characters also profess love in lengths of shudda Nepali prose (one of many things that made me go WTF!)

The action sequences were many and long much too long at times; the kicks were fantastic, reminded me of the many Korean movies I arduously watched with my kid sister at home. Some action scenes must have run the equivalent of a full length song in the movie. A round house kick to the face, when a single kick might have sufficed does indicate that we are and will be getting our share of Korean inspired action movies for quite some time now.

The most controversial seems to be the part where they’ve okayed rape. One of the actors is raped by another in his drunken stupor. The girl (read victim) runs back to him as he happens to be her first love (I say b*ll*cks). This further underpins a women’s diminutive stature in Nepalese society. Add to that the fact that she’s HIV positive and you are already wondering why they couldn’t have saved you the atyachar (melodrama).

Portions of the movie when the actors were expressing full on melodrama, had the audience (not just me) cracking up in bouts of laughter. If it was intended, I’d give the director a standing ovation for the irony, but I doubt this very much as conversation overheard (from the adjacent rows) indicated that people were already guessing and commenting on what came next (and all of them hit ’em right on). So much for an engaging script.

The phoenix in the movie has to be the Karma’s performance. He does stand out with his performance as an unrequited lover. Reecha’s performance as the bookish introvert is also noteworthy. The cinematography also deserves a mention as they used familiar locales but were still able to conjure freshness.

Genre: Romantic
Star cast: Aryan Sigdel, Karma, Vinay Shrestha, Nisha Adhikari, Reecha Sharma, and Sabin Shrestha
Director: Simosh Sunuwar

NB: I am sorry to have divulged some of the plot, but I am guessing most of you who read this have already watched it and are regretting your decision.

Photo credit: Taken from the Facebook page; has over 3200 likes. I seriously wish there was a button to dislike on Facebook. LOL