Aamis (Assamese) - An intriguing take on food, love and sex!

Bharath Vijayakumar

If you are active in social media, it becomes close to impossible to watch a film with absolutely no clue about it. Watching a film like Aamis should actually be catching you unawares but I had an idea as to where this film was headed to, thanks to some memes and posts on it on the internet. So maybe I wasn't as taken aback as I would have being ignorant about the film but I was still taken aback because this isn't a film that relies on shocking you with a mere twist but very carefully, sincerely and beautifully creates a world of characters that you care for and then has them do or undergo things that aren't for the faint hearted.

A bond develops between a research scholar (Sumon) and a married paediatrician (Nirmali). Nirmali isn't able to resist the urge of the attraction she feels for the younger Sumon but is also very careful in not getting physical with him. This isn't a full blown affair yet but even before they come to terms with what is happening both indulge in something that turns dark before they realise it.

Food, love and sex are what the film explores and the demarcation between the three isn't clear on purpose and all the three are intertwined. Foodgasm is what gets Nirmali and Sumon going (meatgasm might be more precise). The film is obviously open to multiple interpretations and I saw it as a take on what could happen if you suppress your desire for love and sex. Not sure if this was entirely the intention of the film but I do believe that there is a very strong case for this. An important character in the film is Jumi( Nirmali's friend) who is having a physical affair outside marriage with a younger guy and is unapologetic about it. She is an important presence in the film and Aamis could be seen as a comparison of these two women. We really do not get to know the nitty-gritty of Jumi's marital life and this is a film that does not judge its characters. We only have one glimpse of Jumi's husband in the film. In this particular scene she lies to him about going out for a movie and he doesn't even respond and is indifferent. Is he indifferent because he knows what she is upto or did she look for love outside marriage because of this indifference is not something that we get to know. But we get to know in detail about Nirmali and her husband Dilip. They seem like what you might call the perfect couple but Nirmali is probably feeling the pinch of mundaneness. There is this beautiful scene in the film where Dilip has to go on duty for a while (Dilip too is a doctor) and Nirmali tries to ask him to stay back. At this point she is in a vulnerable state and she knows she might cross the line if Dilip isn't with her. Nirmali doesn't want to cheat but she is also too much into something by now.

Revealing anything more could be a spoiler but Nirmali and Sumon start doing something which they obviously see as an alternative to getting physical. While moral standards and the essence of morality varies between individuals, what I took away from Aamis is that in trying to supress an emotion that is illicit, the characters end up doing something that is morally wrong on all counts. They do something that causes irreversible damage to people who are not even related to them in any manner. To put it in a more direct way, the characters probably do what they end up doing because maybe society treats murder as a lesser crime compared to infidelity.

All this is just one way to look at Aamis but remove all the interpretations and still this is one intriguing film that has you glued right through. It has this strange mix of uneasiness and the desire to keep watching. There is no gore and there are no jump scares. But a sense of horror is omnipresent. The acting is phenomenal and hardly a false note from anyone and this is one of the reasons this film works. You do not have a weirdo on screen (I mean by the looks or how they carry themselves) but very real looking characters and that is precisely why you sort of cringe out of uneasiness when certain things happen.

As I struggle to find a suitable bottomline for this film, let me put it this way. It is tough to recommend this film to everyone as it would probably work only if you can stomach it and have a certain taste. Oops! This again might be an inappropriate way to describe this film and you would know why if you have seen it!

PS: The movie is streaming on MovieSaints