Movies about irresponsible parenting in the great outdoors have become something of an arthouse subgenre over the past decade. Matt Ross’ Captain Fantastic, Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, India Donaldson’s Good One and Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire all feature children coming of age in the wilderness as their fathers mess up in one way or another. If there’s perhaps one takeaway from all of these films, it’s to be on guard the next time your dad asks you to go on a long hike or camping trip.

Unfortunately, such a warning was never issued to Roy (Woody Norman), the 13-year-old protagonist of French writer-director Vladimir de Fontenay’s latest feature, Sukkwan Island. Embarking with his father, Tom (Swann Arlaud), on an extended séjour to an isolated cabin somewhere in the Norwegian fjords, Roy soon finds himself facing various life or death scenarios while Tom gradually flies off the handle.

Adapted from David Vann’s 2010 novel, which won several awards in France, the film is a rugged two-hander about a son getting to know his estranged father while they attempt to survive through the long and relentless Nordic winter. As the two are confronted by snowstorms, hungry bears and other external threats, it becomes increasingly clear that the real threat is Tom, a troubled man broken by divorce and seeking to build a bond with a boy he doesn’t ever bother to understand.

Like De Fontenay’s debut feature Mobile Homes, which followed an impoverished family scraping by in upstate New York, Sukkwan Island has a powerful immersive quality that makes up for some of its dramatic shortcomings, especially dialogue that can feel either stilted or too on-the-nose.

Shot with stylized naturalism by Amine Berrada (Banel & Adama), the film plunges us into a breathtaking northern landscape that’s virtually untouched by man. Tom and Roy spend a lot of time trudging through heaping piles of snow or jumping into a lake that looks abominably cold. When they’re not doing other outdoor activities like cutting wood or hunting elk, they’re stuck together in an old cabin that could use some major repairs, including a new roof.

The two are doing this at the urging of Tom, a Frenchman who split with Roy’s mother (Tuppence Middleton) and hasn’t been in the picture for some time. He’s hoping the trip will become a rite of passage through which Roy learns both survival instincts and to appreciate the simple beauties of nature. At least for a few days or weeks, that seems to be the case. But then Roy begins to realize his father is selfish, unhinged and, to cite the above-listed movies, totally irresponsible — to the point that he puts them both in serious danger.

Working under what were clearly harsh conditions, De Fontenay achieves a real level of intimacy with his two performers, whose characters are constantly wavering between moments of affection and resentment. Arlaud (Anatomy of a Fall) portrays Tom as a lost soul with good intentions but no idea how to behave like a proper parent. And the excellent Norman (who starred alongside Joaquin Phoenix in C’mon C’mon) reveals how much Roy wants to love and respect his dad, all the while remaining uneasy around him.

Things inevitably come to a head as the winter grows darker and more hostile, forcing Roy and Tom to resort to extremes so they can survive — especially after their two-way radio is destroyed by the latter, who wants to cut them off entirely from civilization. By that point, it becomes difficult to believe that Tom could be so reckless as to risk their lives, making us wonder if he’s gone completely out of his mind. De Fontenay alludes to this earlier when Roy discovers his dad’s stash of anxiety meds, but it’s otherwise hard to imagine the man would take things so far just to prove that he has terrific survival skills.

Alas, the director tosses in a major, not-worth-spoiling twist at the very last minute to explain all the craziness we’ve been witnessing. The plot reversal does manage to justify how things got far so out of hand, though it also comes across as a major cop-out — so much so that several title cards are inserted at the end to make the finale go down more smoothly.

These kinds of twists, whether in the famous dream season of Dallas or nearly every movie made by M. Night Shyamalan, are, at their best, a chance for the viewer to rethink what they’ve been watching, to see the drama in a new light. In some ways De Fontenay achieves this, but in others he undermines his own film. That doesn’t necessarily take away from the better aspects of Sukkwan Island, especially the lived-in performances and you-are-there quality of the direction. But it makes for shaky ground to stand on, with the risk that everything Roy and Tom just went through ultimately loses its staying power.

The lackadaisical guy, Honest Raj (Hari Baskar), is a nobody while the independent girl, Isai (Losliya), is an MNC employee. The two of them get to know each other and develop a meaningful bond. Isai’s decision to choose colleague Harish (Rayan) as her life partner and Honest as her boy bestie leaves many sleepless.

The story is adequate to keep the target audience hooked. The screenplay has engaging moments that are sure to enthrall the young audience. Hari Baskar impresses as the confused, vibrant youngster in some of the sequences. His body language fits into the character’s requirements and he delivers aptly. However, he goes overboard in a few sequences and the influence of a few leading stars’ performances is evident in his expressions.

Losliya is appropriate for her character and shares convincing chemistry with Hari in the sequences she appears in. Her role, which has ample scope for performance, is neatly written. Rayan, too, registers with his role that has multiple shades. Ilavarasu is another actor who impresses. Sha Ra partly manages to entertain with his one-liners.

The confusion and conflicts that ‘love’, ‘live-in’ and ‘situationship’ create for a few characters are entertainingly narrated. Some of the family sequences involving the protagonist, his father, sister and mother, though not new, are compelling. A crucial scene in a police station where the protagonist realises a mistake he committed and a following sequence in which he indulges in a meaningful conversation with his sister stand out.

The vibrant visuals help the movie’s overall mood and the background score works to an extent. The music is loud at times, though.

Though Mr House Keeping has some decent twists and turns, the predictability in the third act is a letdown. The conflict between the leading lady and her fiancé deserves an even more strong reason. It seemed to have been rushed for that generic climax that the audience had been anticipating. An innovative third act or a surprise towards the end would have been more appealing.

The opening of Bottle Radha is an overhead shot of Chennai, with a speaker somewhere playing ‘Thanni Thotti’ from Sindhu Bhairavi (it’s a staple booze anthem in Tamil). There are over a dozen shots of alcohol being poured into glasses in this film, and of men downing bottle after bottle to the point you wonder how they are even alive. Towards the end, there is a bar song with men dancing ecstatically. But before you jump to conclusions, this isn’t the film that celebrates alcoholism.

Debutant director Dhinakaran Sivalingam’s film is a two-hour drama that persistently focuses on the prevalent issue of alcohol addiction. That bar song I mentioned? It’s an intriguing tactic to send a dark message, in a medium that has often used such songs to celebrate boozing.

Radhamani a.k.a Sorakkapalyam Radha (Guru Somasundaram) is a middle-aged man who spends much of his time and money in the liquor shop, chugging bottles and engaging in petty quarrels. He is a deadbeat with no redeeming qualities, and Sivalingam holds no bars in depicting the flaws of his protagonist. Radha appears drunk even at his work site, and his job as a construction worker is an irony by itself. He knows nothing about building a home — the one you build with affection, responsibility, a longing for peace and comfort, and a million other little things — but claims to be an expert in building houses — empty structures made with bricks, cement and sand that are brought to life by families. That he builds houses for other families while squandering the future of his wife Anjalam (a fantastic Sanchana Natarajan) and their two kids says a subtle something about who alcoholism more often ends up affecting, and the whys and hows of its prevalence among the working-class (in umpteen instances, the film humorously points out how many addicts refuse to take responsibility because “it’s the government that has a liquor shop every corner,” but it also shows what easy accessibility can do to addicts in recovery).

In an unexpected turn for Radha, his wife, tired of making this ill-behaved man see some sense, forcibly enrols him in a one-of-a-kind de-addiction centre. In a dilapidated room are lodged dozens of addiction patients. Much of these initial portions are treated with humour, and many scenes featuring Lollu Sabha Maaran leave you in splits. However, this de-addiction centre is where issues with Bottle Radha also begin. Firstly, many of the characters we see in this de-addiction centre add nothing to our understanding of how these places function, or what goes in the mind of an addict.

Ashokan (John Vijay) runs the place with a firm, fair hand — he minces no words when the patients justify their acts and reprimands his subordinate Elango, a strange man with a compulsion for cruelty. But except for a patient’s passing remark on the centre’s budget, we are never told what Ashokan feels about the concerning state of this strange place. As much as they help the film’s humour, the patients add little value to Radha’s story. Also, what was the point of that romance between two mentors that goes nowhere? Sure, Elango’s case, and the sorry state of his victims, paint a stark picture of how these centres function, but what good does it do when we don’t understand what goes behind Elango’s hunger for power? You also wonder if Elango’s violence towards a patient had to be so excessive. Similar is the case with a scene in which The Shawshank Redemption is played at the centre; though you are impressed by this fresh take on a timeless classic, you are left with a sense of unease in how the sequence ends.

Bottle Radha chooses heart over intellect, relying solely on drama to do all the heavy lifting, and ends up offering scattered returns. In one of the hard-hitting stretches, Radha is consumed by darkness, anything resembling light devoured by his almost life-threatening addiction. His bloodshot eyes mince all that self-loathing into a contempt for the world, and you almost forget that this is an enactment. No slight emotions escape Guru Somasundaram’s face, and many scenes feature the performer pouring his heart out. Yet, in another scene, when he listens to a man open up on how alcoholism destroyed his family, Somasundaran appears….only as Somasundaram. Make no mistake, the issue isn’t with the actor; in fact, it is he who powers the film to become something more than what it settles to be.

The performance appears as such because the story’s didactic pursuit leads to many contrived situations and scenes. The film is so focused on taking us through the highs and lows of Radha’s alcoholism that it forgets to make him whole. This is disappointing because in a scene he tells Anjalam about how despite starting his days with a lot of resoluteness to not drink, ‘something’ pulls him back to the bottle. This something sometimes is external — like his friend Shake (Pari Elavazhagan) whose idea of a grand death is to die drinking — but except for a detail about his childhood, we don’t get much to understand the internal struggle of Radha. The film repeatedly tells us that every time he feels low, he goes on a bender and that he hasn’t seen all that lies beyond the bottle. But why does he chase the high of alcohol in the first place? Is it after a sense of security? Or, does it come from having grown up without a proper support system? Or maybe a disease is a disease and it can never be understood; maybe it’s a vortex to oblivion, but if that’s the case, why can’t we see, say, Ashokan speak about all that?

A still from ‘Bottle Radha’
| Photo Credit:
Think Music India/YouTube

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Instead, all we get are repetitions of Radha’s drinking, relapses and otherwise, and after a point, you hardly care about what lies ahead of him. Fascinatingly, you are more drawn towards the story of Anjalam and how she deals with this precarious marriage. Her arc wonderfully underlines how alcoholism, like most other social crises, affects women from poorer sections of society. In one of the initial scenes, a police officer warns Anjalam of punishment, pinning responsibility on her for how her husband behaves; in another heartbreaking scene with splendid performances, she heartbrokenly confesses all that she endured in the absence of her deadbeat husband. How her arc shapes up might be a tad too predictable, but what she stands for compels you to look beyond the flaws in the film.

The flaws, however, don’t diminish the importance of a film like Bottle Radha. And for a feature debutant, this is a commendable start by Sivalingam. As in a beautiful scene between Anjalam and Radha in the rain, many moments hint at a filmmaker with a lot of heart and ambition.

Bottle Radha is currently running in theatres