Window Seat movie review: Sheetal Shetty makes impressive directorial debut with this whodunit

3.5/5

Story: Raghu (Nirup) is a musician who commutes by train to his place of work – a resto-bar. The train journeys are special to him, as he manages to catch a glimpse of the girl of his dreams from the window seat. He hopes to someday muster the courage and tell her about his feelings, but is heartbroken when he then chances upon the scene of her murder. As an ‘eye-witness’, Raghu tries to help the cops get to the bottom of this crime, but that’s when it all goes topsy-turvy.

Review: Take a bow, Sheetal Shetty! What an engrossing and edgy film to start your directorial journey. Truly commendable. Earlier this week, filmmaker-actor Rakshit Shetty had said that Sheetal is a welcome addition to the flock of Kannada filmmakers, especially since she brings a female perspective to story-telling and characterizations. Spot on! Sheetal’s story-telling and craft is, honestly, far superior than a lot of experienced hands in the industry, and having her at the helm of affairs means that the she handled the presentation of the lady police officer Parvathi (Lekha Naidu) with finesse. In an industry where female cops are quite often caricatures and are meant to only add to the comic value, this no-nonsense police officer, with no punchlines, action, or a larger-than-life persona is a breath of fresh air.

Window Seat is a smartly written whodunit thriller. The narrative is taut, the twists have surprise value, there’s good music, great performances from the cast and, most importantly, deft handling in putting it all together by Sheetal. These are the kind of films that ought to be seen and supported in theatres, but if the turnout at this afternoon’s show is any indication, it will take a lot of effort to get audiences to head to the movie halls.

Prior to the pandemic, the biggest grouse that Kannada filmmakers had was that audiences were not coming to theatres; they’d rather wait for the film to come on TV. Then Covid happened, OTTs boomed and audiences got even more comfortable waiting only a month or two for films to drop on a streaming platform. Earlier, audiences claimed that the downturn in footfalls in theatres was because of a lack of good content. Today, even when good content comes to theatres, there are hardly any takers, and some other excuses are bandied about, like, for instance, not enough publicity, audience fatigue after the release of several big-ticket films, etc. In fact, the first question I get these days after publishing a review is, ‘when is it coming on OTT?’

Window Seat will come to Zee5 at some point, but why not catch it in theatres instead? Nirup Bhandari excels in his role as Raghu, as does Amrutha Iyengar. Sanjana Anand is solid in her role too, but could have been dealt a slightly better hand. The stand-out performance, though, comes from Lekha and while one wishes to see more of her onscreen, here’s hoping that she does not get typecast. One grouse I have, though, is in how slapping a woman is normalized and that an apology is all it takes for all to be forgotten and forgiven.

Verdict: Window Seat, for me, was a paisa vasool experience. But if your idea of paisa vasool is heroism, elevation, item numbers, action, etc., this is not it. Give it a dekko, though. You will not be disappointed.