CAST: Sharib Ali Hashmi, Jyotii Sethi, Nutan Surya

DIRECTION: Abhishek Saxena

GENRE: Drama

DURATION: 1 hour 36 minutes

STORY

Phullu makes it his life’s mission to educate and empower the women in his village by providing better sanitary solutions.

REVIEW

If government-sponsored public service ads suddenly got bigger production budgets, they would look a lot like Phullu. Like a PSA, the movie over-emphasizes everything with straightforward lines mouthed by amateur actors who pause for effect as the melodramatic background score kicks in. It is a few steps above the anti-smoking spot that plays before movies, and a few steps below the Swachch Bharat campaign, that at least manages to evoke laughter while urging people to build lavatories.

The message here is simple: women should have access to affordable sanitary pads. The social stigmas attached with menstruation and men’s ignorance of the subject provide ample fodder for a clever comedy. The jokes should practically write themselves. But the ones that writer Shaheen Iqbal includes here, are laboured and crass. The writing also does a disservice to the characters; they are weirdly naive about certain issues but could beat sexperts with their in-depth knowledge of certain others.

Like the titular Phullu (Hashmi), a grown man who claims to “take care” of the lonely wives of the village and brings sanitary pads for them, but is utterly clueless about periods. He keeps referring to it as “janaanirog” (female disease) even after months of being married and having an active sex life. It’s all just bizarre. Aren’t the characters talking to each other when the camera isn’t rolling?

Phullu is shocked to know of the side-effects of using a piece of cloth instead of sanitary pads (another PSA moment with a doctor dispensing facts) and strives to learn the process of manufacturing them. But between beautiful aerial shots of a lake, slo-mo songs, random domestic comedy and abruptly cut sequences, the actual runtime dedicated to his education is too little. It is reduced to a few shots of him cutting-up bundles of cotton with scissors.

The only highlights here are Phullu’s mother and a beggar outside a mosque (a great cameo by Inaamulhaq) who provide comic relief. Other than that, it’s all bloated with basic information and will give you cramps.