Mirage Analysis

Mirage

Co-written & Directed by: Oriol Paulo

Available on Netflix.

This film is a time travel movie, where a boy dies and 25 years later a woman gets a chance to save the boy's life in the past but in the process she accidentally loses all of her family, in this new reality she didn't even meet her husband yet and hence she has lost her daughter now. So, she has to get her daughter back. The plot sounds interesting but it got complex in between and in spite of a few good moments, that feeling of everything falling into place wasn't there by the end of the film unlike Oriol Paulo's previous films. In this film too he uses the trope of a character being in the film with a changed identity and hence I guessed a twist beforehand in this film. The look of the film is similar to Oriol Paulo's previous film The Invisible Guest, it has blue tones mostly and yellow at times. It feels like if they set that color tone for the film, the cinematography is mostly taken care of and nothing much is done other than that. They focus on just capturing the events, the cinematography in itself doesn't call attention to itself. I can't recall watching these color tones in Indian films till now, apart from the Netflix originals Sacred Games and in Dibakar Banerjee's segment in Ghost Stories.

The film kept me hooked throughout, I was expecting better things would happen and I enjoyed the film but by the ending I had a vague feeling. It's probably because the problem in itself is a superficial element and when the solution of the film too comes from a superficial element, it feels like they could've done this anyway. In spite of they laying the rules of the world, they aren't that clearly registered that when they show a solution, we feel that this was right under our noses and we couldn't figure this out. The film tries something new, in terms of the complex plot especially because of the time travel added to the Oriol Paulo universe. Expecting a kick-ass thriller show from Paulo.