• Chetan Nadiger
Film: Tenant
Producer: Nagaraj T
Director: Sridhar Shastri
Starring: Dharma Keerthiraj, Sonu Gowda, Rakesh Maiya, Tilak and ‘Ugram’ Manju
The Covid-19 pandemic, a deeply challenging period for humanity, has given rise to numerous feature films that explore its significant effects on people’s lives, emphasising social disruption, loss of life, and economic hardship. However, this week’s release ‘Tenant’, deviates from the standard. The film is a crime thriller set during the lockdown.
Set against the backdrop of Covid-19 lockdown, the film revolves around a few characters and is set in a single location. The film starts off with a bachelor Sundaresh (Dharma Keerthiraj) cleaning blood stains in a house. A police officer called Jai (Tilak) smelling something fishy in the house interrogates him. Slowly, it is revealed that the tenant has killed the owner Kamalesh (Rakesh Maiya) and has house arrested the landlord’s wife Damini (Sonu Gowda). The wife reveals that the bachelor has been creating nuisance and has been sending indecent messages to her for a while. When Kamalesh comes to know about this, Sundaresh loses his cool and kills him. What happens next forms the crux of the film.
Though the story sounds very simple, the film is quite complicated. Debutant director Sridhar Shastri has written an intriguing script with lot of layers that keeps the audience engaged particularly in the second half of the film. Sridhar apart from directing the film, has written the story and screenplay of the film. Sridhar in an interview had said that he was inspired by the dark phase of the Covid, where a lot of scams disturbed the people. ‘Tenant’ not only revolves around the dark phase of lockdown, but also the dark side of humans. Though the film revolves around such scams, Sridhar has raised another issue against the backdrop of the lockdown period. He has narrated a crime story which went unnoticed during the lockdown.
Despite being a film of one-and-a-half-hour duration, the film is a bit lagging particularly in the first half of the film. The second half slowly gains momentum when the real drama unfolds. There are a lot of twists and turns in the second half and the director is successful in holding the audience. Its quite difficult to engage the audience in a single location. Sridhar has taken such a challenge in his debut film itself.
The film revolves around only five characters and Sonu Gowda emerges the winner with her performance among the five. It’s quite risky and challenging to accept such a character and Sonu has not only dared to accept it, but has also excelled in her performance. Dharma who is often seen in chocolate boy roles is seen in a different role. Rakesh Maiya, Tilak and ‘Ugram’ Manju have done justice to their characters. Manohar Joshi’s cinematography and background music by Girish Hothur engages the audience thoroughly.
‘Tenant’ is a film for the audience who likes crime thrillers. Watch it if you are one.
