Nawal Enna Jewel

Nawal Enna Jewel directed by Renjilal Damodaran is testing you in all possible ways. In my 7th standard I was part of a drama done by my classmates and I can confidently say that we were able to create much better dialogues at that age when compared to the extremely melodramatic, unreal dialogues we get to hear in Nawal Enna Jewel. The film is sluggish and tries to have a sophisticated look in the most annoying way possible.

Nawal is the daughter of a Malayali woman and an Iranian man. She was raised by her mother and her Chachu. The independent progressive girl who went on to become an interior designer faced some terrible things in the male dominant world and the movie is showing us her struggle.

As a one liner story Nawal enna Jewel is that fair enough usual story and I am thinking that’s the reason why an actor like Adil Hussain appeared in an extended cameo in this film. The making of the movie is really terrible. The way the characters talk in this film is unbearably unreal. Ranjilal Damodaran pampers even the simplest of dialogues with too much of intellectual interpretations to give you a headache. And why is Adil Hussain’s character trying to speak such complicated Malayalam when he knows that Nawal is an educated woman who is fluent in English, Arabic and Malayalam (The Mammootty level fluency in Accha Din). In the second half the film shifts its tone to become an international cinema and with nothing impactful happening till that point, you don’t really get the need of all those hypes. The narrative is so slow that it might look perfect if you play the movie in 2x speed.

Reem Kadem, Iranian actress is playing the role of Nawal. She is trying her best to be the character. But the dubbing and her understanding of dialogues causes some major issues. The reactions on her face at times aren’t the appropriate one. Shwetha Menon groans like Chewbacca at some points in the film and her dubbing is also inconsistent. Weta digital people would be amazed if they see this film, as a woman who had no raw materials in her hand was able to make prosthetics that looked original and live for years without getting recognized. Adil Hussain in his extended guest role was fine except for the terrible Malayalam he was forced to speak. Alen Matters and Anjali Nair were terrible in delivering those dialogues. Anu Sithara, Sudheer Karamana and Paris Laxmi were there in the film in small roles and seeing the similarity in the looks of Paris Laxmi and Reem Kadem, I felt Laxmi would have been a much better choice to play Nawel.

Renjilal Damodaran’s making is tackier than an amateur drama. People inside the cinema hall were getting frustrated seeing the cheesy theatrical scenes and suffocating literature coated dialogues. He tries to make the visuals look like an intellectualized version of something that he only knows. Remember that movie in Mr. Bean’s Holiday? Nawal Enna Jewel is pretty much that. The budget gives the movie the look and feel of a decent film and the relevance of the theme makes the idea a filmable one. But what you see is shallow street drama kind of outbursts and preaches with zero emotional impact. The songs were fine and I didn’t felt anything “Hollywood” about the background music. The production design was poor.

Relevance of theme is not enough to make a movie worth appreciating. Nawal Enna Jewel is a terribly written, poorly made film with lackluster performances.  If I was the projector operator, I would have helped the audience by changing the playing speed.

Rating: 1/5