Ebb movie review
Cast: Jeo Baby, Divya Prabha, Jitin Puthanchery
Director: Jeo Baby
Star rating: ★★★
Jeo Baby’s films are nothing if they do not ask tough questions. After The Great Indian Kitchen and Kaathal: The Core, the filmmaker has delivered his most provocative and daring film with Ebb. This time, he is taking aim at relationships, desire, and the idea that monogamy is a rather futile choice. What if both the man and the woman were able to break free from the codes of a relationship and twist it to co-exist? What if they shared about each other’s affairs and were okay with it? It is better said than being done in practice, and Ebb gradually provokes with the repercussions of it.
The premise
Adarsh (played by Baby himself) and Maria (a nuanced performance by Divya Prabha) are a married couple who seem to share everything with each other. They are open to the idea of having sexual partners outside, and the camera stays above their bed, and the other beds in hotel rooms, as both Adarsh and Maria make conversations right after making love. Maria is seeing her office colleague Siddharth (Jitin Puthanchery), and shares how she and Adarsh are comfortable with the fact that she is with him. He remarks that he cannot even think about how they manage to make it work. Things complicate when Adarsh shares that it is his ‘fantasy’ to see both Maria and Siddharth together in bed.
It is a wild suggestion, and Ebb takes the leap to frame the scene right on Adarsh’s face when the action unfolds. Adarsh cannot handle this any longer; his own perversion amounts to his own undoing, as he becomes possessive of Maria. He is a man after all, and all the performative hypocrisy that he so easily shows is dashed out of the window. He cannot confront the wokeness he so wants to believe. Jeo Baby’s daring turn is quite affecting, even when the film takes a disturbing step at the end.
A film bound to polarise viewers
After the premiere at the festival, when I asked Jeo Baby about the film, he made it clear that this was a film ‘not about marriage, but relationships.’ However, the film cannot exist in total isolation from the concept of monogamous unity, which is so sanctimonious in an Indian marriage. Siddharth’s wife, Farzana, is unaware that he is cheating, and when the camera faces him, it is not post-coital bliss of any sort. Their baby boy is playing on the bed, while Farzana is either asleep or too tired to see that her husband is being racked with guilt yet cannot stop.
Ebb is disturbing, confrontational and provocative. It is a film that will polarise viewers, and that is a deliberate decision. Jeo Baby intends to poke at the genteel, sophisticated consciousness of a society that cannot openly speak about desire or sex. However, the film positions itself more as an experiment, a box of provocations, ideas, and interrogations. When the questions are all asked, Ebb becomes a whirlpool of suggestive visual metaphors that weaken the film’s overall impact. The film is quite short and lacks a sense of dramatic growth. After a point, the conversations become repetitive and exhausting, and the subjectivity is lost in the pursuit of the same questions. Jeo Baby knows what he is aiming at, but his film does not feel the need to locate the root cause of such burdensome morality that our society is so bent on protecting.
