Movie Review – 3 Storeys – by Suhel Johar

3 Storeys Is The Type Of Fiction That Will Please You In Bits And Parts.

3 Storeys, a thriller drama directed by Arjun Mukerjee, is an intriguing film full of twists and turns. Over the course of 3 acts, dark secrets and past regrets are revealed, and it becomes clear that life in this small community is not quite what it seems.

The film takes us on a journey across three floors of a lively chawl in Maya Nagar, presenting a microcosm of human existence amidst Mumbai’s bustling urban landscape. A playful and moving study of intricately intertwined lives, the film depicts loves lost, avenged and forbidden. Over the course of three acts, dark secrets and past regrets are revealed, and it becomes clear that life in this small community is not quite what it seems.

3 Storeys is set in a Mumbai chawl, and the time is here and now. We see the inhabitants, who live on different floors or storeys and they are the stories: there’s your elderly busybody aunty, Flory Mendonca (Renuka Shahane) who has a nicely appointed ‘kholi’ to sell, but is waiting for the right buyer (Pulkit Samrat), but not in the way you’d think; there’s the abused wife Archana (Masumeh Makhija) of a drunken lout, who is suddenly confronted by her lost love (Sharman Joshi); there’s the young Muslim boy Sohail (Ankit Rathi) in love with a pretty Hindu girl, the dreamy-eyed Malini (Aisha Ahmed) unaware of the dark secret that surrounds them they elope and are forcibly brought back only to realise that their romance was doomed to be short-lived by reasons of birth.

In all of this, there’s a fourth story too, one that knits the rest of the tales together, with Richa Chadha as the sutradhar. About imagination and interpretation of reality, about finding the distinct faces in the crowd of humanity and hearing the distinct heartbeats of individuals in the noise around, it could have been more than just a narrative device. Unfortunately it gets short shrift.

Each of the stories comes with an underlying intrigue and unpredictability and the proverbial twist in the tale. However, the telling is full of contrivances that stretch credibility. It gets too lazy and limp to engage consistently. Moreover, a feeling of “been there, seen that” hangs heavy on each of them. A multiple narrative film that could have been more inventive than it is. Even if not madly original, ensemble pieces can turn out interesting if consistently told. 3 Storeys comes off nice in bits but uneven overall. The absence of melodrama is a relief but it is not a film that impacts an audience, either emotionally or intellectually. Because life is so messy, you don’t always have to tie up all the loose ends quite so neatly: it’s always more intriguing to let a few hanging. But very few filmmakers like to take this route, because we like our endings neat.

Direction by debutant Arjun Mukherjee is clever but carries a diluted effect especially when it comes to ending a story. Althea Kaushal’s stories are good but they seem to get stretched after a certain point. Her screenplay is contrived and fails to leave an overall impact. Dialogue by Anvita Dutt are effective. Cinematography by Will Humphris is excellent. Editing by Arindam Ghatak is good and so is the music by Clinton Cerejo.

Performancewise, it is nice to see Renuka Shahane, who aims for naturalness despite some hard to digest aspects in the way her part is written. But she still holds your attention whenever she's on screen. Pullkit Samrat who is part of this segment does well.

Masumeh Makhija does well and seems extremely competent as an actress. Sharman Joshi who plays her old lover has come up with an absorbing performance. He makes you wonder why an actor like him doesn’t get more work in the films. 

Newcomers Ankit Rathi and Aisha Ahmed are convincing in their act. They seem to share a bubbly chemistry and are natural in front of the camera. Richa Chadda's as the sutradhar is impressive. The rest of the cast does as expected of them.

On the whole, 3 Storeys is an intriguing film even though contrivances abound.