Mili movie review: Janhvi Kapoor excels in this perceptive socio-cultural survival thriller

The film’s supporting cast is just as solid. Manoj Pahwa is absolutely endearing as Mili’s single father who forms the core of her small, sheltered world. Sunny Kaushal plays her boyfriend Sameer with an easy affability. But it is Anurag Arora who really stands out as the bad cop and wonderfully illustrates how commonplace evil can be.

The film’s technical departments deserve a special mention too. The sound design by Leslie Fernandes is brilliant; it amps up the thrill, making significant of even Mili’s minutest movements inside the cold storage as she bends over backwards to stay alive. Monisha R Baldawa’s editing is slick; she makes some of the shot transitions work like metaphors. The role and responsibility of makeup artists are crucial in films like these, where the changing physicality of the protagonist signals their withering away. Mili’s MUAs do a terrific job of showing the various stages of her body crumbling down in sub-zero temperatures.

However, the relentless closeups of her bleeding nose, broken ankle, elbow shorn off the skin, and face that’s swollen and turned purple beyond recognition are a little on the excess. The film’s convenient plotting to heighten the drama—her father finding out about her relationship in an unfortunate circumstance, smartphones breaking or shutting down just when needed the most, Sameer meeting with a minor accident at a crucial point, or a jailed inmate saving the day—is too contrived, making Mili feel like a film despite all its realism. The in-your-face symbolism doesn’t work either; it’s simplistic in a way that reveals the director doesn’t trust his audience’s intelligence enough.

But what sets Mili apart from most films of this genre is that it revolves around a woman and therefore gives ample room to address themes such as chauvinism, and the male gaze. The film also wonderfully highlights how, often, women have to suffer to alter the prejudices of the men around them. It is packaged as a survival thriller, but at its heart, Mili is a perceptive socio-cultural drama about how the gender of the missing person decides the questions, the concerns, and the investigation.