As college life comes to a close, roommates and lovers Suku and Charlie prepare to part ways. They spend their final days together drinking on the beach, discussing literature, making love and taking long drives down deserted roads. A health emergency forces Suku to leave town early, and when he returns following a near-death experience, he finds Charlie leading a spectral existence, intimate to him but invisible to everyone else. Afrad Vk’s debut feature Riptide offers a warm, delicate love story whose tenderness stands in contrast with the thumping machismo of mainstream Malayalam cinema centred on straight, young men. Presented in three chapters, including a bold digression into a pre-colonial past, Vk’s film interweaves reality and illusion, unfolding alternatingly as a sober ghost story and a wistful romance at the brink of disintegration. Shot in a beguiling soft light and a muted colour palette, Riptide is punctuated by dreamy musical interludes that transport Suku and Charlie into a time and place far removed from the iniquities of the world. The film’s leisurely rhythm and spatial openness allow the lovers to be themselves even as the walls inexorably close in on them.
