Telugu filmmakers love pulling the rug off your feet. In every other movie, we have a final act twist that alters one's entire perspective of a story, or a protagonist’s motives. This pattern has now become so common that the idea of twist itself has become predictable. Even by these standards, however, Beauty, the latest relationship drama, is a true-blue shocker. Unlike most other films, this film really takes you aback with its twists and turns — except, I am not sure how much this redeems it as a film, overall. 

Director: JSS Vardhan

Cast: Ankith Koyya, Nilakhi Patra, Naresh VK, Vasuki

It’s hard to talk about this film without giving away spoilers, but Beauty is essentially the story of Alekhya (Nilakhi Patra), a college girl raised with a lot of love from her middle-class father. Yet, she feels stifled in her commonplace life of limited means. You are compelled to take Alekhya’s child-like behaviour with a pinch of salt. She is not particularly likeable, especially in the early portions where she whines, but then that’s how kids are — sometimes, they will annoy you, but they are what they are. There is an honesty to Alekhya’s selfishness here, and she is a protagonist worth being curious about.  The set-up is followed by a pleasant love story arc between Arjun (Ankith Koyya) and Alekhya, who seemingly keep bumping into each other by sheer accident until cupid strikes again. 

Unfortunately, Beauty is not interested in exploring its characters' emotional complexity. After a point, the film dives straight into a soap opera-like territory, both in content and execution, where it goes for twists and thrills over depth and gravitas. Before we realise it, we are just following the chain of events, to see what happens next. Early on, Alekhya is established as a girl with vanity and materialistic desires. None of this comes into play when the story gets going in the second half. Similarly, we are told Alekhya thinks of the ocean as a friend, a detailing that is both bizarre and ornamental at once. 

There are a few splashes where the film shows potential of tapping into its core emotional ideas — the fear and paranoia of growing up as a young girl in a liberal yet conservative environment, where you are always walking on eggshells, and often end up overcompensating to make up for the lack of complete freedom. The second half in particular is full of promise where the two lovers are on their own, and are now discovering more about each other. There are also many impressive moments of visual styling (cinematography by Shrie SaiKumaar Daara), where director JSS Vardhan extracts tension out of minor moments with use of innovative shot-taking and camera angles, like when Alekhya’s mother (an impressive Vasuki) goes into panic mode over a promise made to a friend. Vijai Bulganin’s music too lends the narrative a lot of emotion. 

However, the material of Beauty — the hot-blooded passion of teenage love, where emotions often override logic — is very tricky, and Vardhan comes up short in his treatment. As a result, some really impactful moments on paper become awkward because of wrongly-pitched performances and a lack of tonal clarity from the director. 

Ankith Koyya deserves to be lauded for merely choosing a risky role like this so early in his career. The AAY actor has both innocence and intensity that works for Arjun, a middle-class dog trainer whose puppy eyes are hiding something mysterious underneath. Nilakhi Patra, playing Alekhya, makes an earnest debut — she has an expressive face, and commits to the narrative’s dramatic tonality (even though it backfires occasionally). Naresh VK is dependable, as always, playing Alekhya’s father. 

But we must talk again, about the final act twist. The table-turning switch from one of the primary characters is brutal and relentless. There is no justification, no tragic backstory. Some people, under a warm disguise, are pure evil — and Beauty shoves this bitter truth right in our faces. Early on in the film, a character is established as a ruthless sadist. For the next 90 minutes or so, we are compelled to root against him and see him with disgust — until is it told that they are, infact, a good-hearted human being, sincere in their intentions, albeit carrying their own share of baggage and prejudice. The real evil lies somewhere else, sometimes staring us on our faces — except we are too delusional to notice. 

However, instead of approaching this device to paint out a messy portrayal of life where nothing makes sense, the writer-director duo uses it to deliver a worn-out cautionary tale. The story doesn’t stop at revealing the unlikely evil figure, and this entire arc is part of the larger sermonising scheme, and that doesn’t sit well with you. 

What’s the point of Beauty, then, besides offering a worn-out, familiar moral science lesson? I couldn’t figure it out.