Sunny review: Jayasurya impresses as man in solitude

Sunny

Malayalam (Amazon Prime Video)

Director: Ranjith Sankar

Cast: Jayasurya

Rating: 3/5

The Malayalam film industry has dished out yet another quarantine film as ‘Sunny’ begins with a note “To 2020, a year spent in solitude”. After ‘CU Soon’ and ‘Love’, which had minimal characters, ‘Sunny’ claims to be a ‘one man, one space’ film.

The film manages to capture the outside world, with just voices of people speaking through a mobile phone.

‘Sunny’ is about Sunny Varkey, a troubled man, who lands in Kerala and has been put under institutional quarantine. Scenes where he drinks himself silly and walks around confused on his first day of quarantine sets the mood for what will follow.

He is a musician who gave up his passion to become a businessman in Dubai. Everything goes haywire and he is forced to return to his homeland.

SI Sadasivan Nair (voice of Vijayraghavan), Doctor Eerali (voice of Innocent), ‘Kozhi’ Rajesh (voice by Aju Varghese) and Advocate Paul (voice of Vijay Babu) help Sunny be more realistic.

Many touching lines like ‘Who does someone call when they have no one to call?’ and ‘Yes, I’m busy sitting alone’ explain the solitude in Sunny’s life. A scene where Sunny traps an ant in an overturned glass is symbolic of his situation. Soon enough, he frees it, apologises and feeds it sugar, probably hopeful about an escape in his life.

Jayasurya excels as a man with bitter struggles. With limited resources, yet a lavish indoor setting, the director has done his best to say the 93-minute long tale well.