Diamond Necklace

Arun (Fahd) is a young happy-go-lucky doctor working in a hospital in Dubai. He lives the life of the rich- goes about in expensive cars, lives in Burj Dubai (Burj Khalifa), the world’s tallest building, carries a number of credit/debit cards with him and dresses fashionably. But take a close look and you understand that all this is mere show-off- the cars that he travel in get confiscated every now and then, the flat that he lives in is in fact his friend’s, the cards that he uses mostly don’t work and every now and then he gets calls from the Bank asking to clear off his credit card liabilities and loans. He is very much like any other Malayalee working out there in the Gulf. In a sense Venu (Sreenivasan), who hails from Arun’s hometown and who is visibly poorer and lives in the workers’ barracks in Dubai, is much happier and even well off if you get to know things from a different perspective. Arun has as his mentor, guide and friend Dr. Savithri (Rohini), whom Arun calls Akka (meaning ‘elder sister’) and who helps him in every way. It’s then that a new nurse Lakshmi (Gowthami Nair) comes and joins Arun’s hospital. Arun and Lakshmi develop a very close kind of relationship, which gradually turns into love. Arun also comes across Maya (Samvritha Sunil), who is related to ‘Akka’ and who is a fashion designer and who plans to open a boutique in Dubai. In the meantime Arun has to fly back home as his mother gets hospitalized and back home, he is caught in a situation where he has to get married, to Kalamandalam Rajashri (Anusree), a dancer. How these three women- Lakshmi, Maya and Rajashri- shape and influence Arun’s life and how he shapes their lives and how their relationships evolve and what all happens to Arun’s life then on forms the theme of ‘Diamond Necklace’.


What I feel is that ‘Diamond Necklace’ in fact is Lal Jose’s best film till date; it’s his most intelligent film. Of course there are many other Lal Jose films that I like, many that we like to watch again and again, but ‘Diamond Necklace’ is a cut above the rest of them. It’s a multi-layered film, based on a very well-written script. It’s well conceived, well shot and has some brilliant performances as its highlight. The characters stay on in your memory and you wish you get to see such films more often. There are things that seem clichéd and which, you feel could have been done away with, like Sreenivasan’s character for example. But then, you feel the character is very much integral to the plot and that Lal Jose could have handled the character a bit more subtly. Well, despite all this, ‘Diamond Necklace’ is a film that needs to be watched, appreciated and analysed. Hats off Lal Jose and team.

                           Hats off to Samir Thahir. He is proving it again and again that he is a cinematographer to reckon with (and of course a good director too, which he has proved himself to be, with ‘Chaapa Kurish’). Well, without Samir, ‘Diamond Necklace’ wouldn’t have been what it is. Good job, Samir. Mohandas on the art side has done a good job and Ranjan Abraham has edited it well.
It's a Multilayer ed, well shot, well conceived movie.