‘Angamaly Diaries’ review: Eat, pray, love and fight

If you are lucky to catch a show of Angamaly Diaries, you will realise why Malayalis love their food, cinema and 10ml — when they pour, it rains 90ml. And, why they might privately laugh at Bollywood’s Rs 100 crore club. Director Lijo Jose Pellissery and scriptwriter Chemban Vinod Jose cook up a perfect storm. Set in a small town, Angamaly Diaries is an edgy, coming-of-age story wrapped in empathy for its characters. It has all the ingredients of a mainstream broth — love, heartbreak, freestyle fighting, bro code, chase scenes and two murders.

Throughout its 90-minute duration, you won’t desire popcorn and cola. They are poor substitutes for a carnivore viewer who loves his beef, pork, chicken, mutton, rice and malabar porotha. In the Kerala village with a predominantly Christian population, pork and prayers are the sources of physical and spiritual salvation. The lucrative business of pork plays a pivotal role in the narrative — building, breaking and rebuilding the lives of a band of men who eat, pray, love and fight for fun and survival. They are ordinary people with ordinary aspirations. Yet there is not an iota of boredom.

The hero Vincent Pepe — played by talented newcomer Antony …read more