A scene from the movie Umrika.
The presence of Sharma (from Ang Lee's The Life of Pi) and Revolori, the bellboy stuck on fast-forward in Wes Anderson's mystifyingly popular The Grand Budapest Hotel, may improve the fortunes of this straightforward family drama by expatriate director writer-director Nair.
Sharma plays Ramakant, still a child in the opening
scenes when his brother Udai (Babbar) leaves their isolated mountain village for the land of opportunity (the film's title is the Hindi name for America). The boys' mother (Tambe) is fretful when no longed-for letters come, then joyful when a stream correspondence begins, full of news and photographs.
We instantly recognise the letters as bogus, but the explanation for them doesn't come until the boys' father (Pathak) dies in an accident and Ramakant realises that his dad and his uncle, the local postie, have been conspiring in a comforting fiction.
The now-teen hero, later joined by his village mate, Lalu (Revolori), heads off in search of his brother, his only clue being the name of a character in Mumbai who was supposed to have transported him.
It's a dark and downbeat affair, particularly when the scene shifts from the laughably pretty set-dressed village to the grimy streets of the city. The film offers an eye-opening portrait of struggle-street life on the subcontinent and, more interestingly, in refracting the view of America through the eyes of characters who will never get there, it has a lot to say about cultural identity and emigrant aspirations.
