 |
*ing
Suhasini, Anant Nag, Ashok Mandanna, Mukhyamantri Chandru, Sihi Kahi Chandru, Priya Ganapathy, Pallavi M.D ...
|
|
>>>'Stumble' Gallery<<<
|
| Director: Prakash Belawadi
|
| Producers: S.N. Krishna Chidambara, Nagaraja Rao and Krishna Kumar
|
| Music: Praveen D. Rao
|
| |
Prakash Belawadi's 'Stumble' is a moving, finely observed human portrait of the software bust in Bangalore. A southern tale in English "..Bangalore has become the hot-bed for new age film makers experimenting with the medium and language. Close on the heels of Mahesh Dattani's Indian English production Mango Souffle comes Stumble, by Bangalore playwright Prakash Belawadi. An English feature film with sprinklings of Kannada and Telugu, Stumble explores the after effect of lay-offs in the software industry.
The film, being entirely shot in Bangalore, deals with the travails of the Raos', a middle-class Indian family blinded by the promises of the new age economy. "Bangalore by its very involvement in the IT industry forms the setting, also affecting the predominant mood and pace in Stumble," explains Belawadi…"
Story
Darshan Khosla (DK) is the director of Mont Piton (India) Technologies (MPI), a software company. MPI is now deep in the red having gone down with the dot.com bust, but DK, ever ready to jump on the bandwagon, now wants to start a call center. But he needs new staff for this new line of business and goes about laying off his loyal old employees without compunction. In the process, he does not even baulk at manipulating his old friend and co-director in-charge of technology, Prashant Hegde. But he needs the software that Hegde's team is developing for the call center. So, DK, with the active support of his socialite wife Indu, hatches a plot to get rid of Hegde and his team while retaining the software.
Hegde's core team, comprising Aditya, Subbu, Vasu, Sengupta and Madhu is broken up with the layoffs. But DK is cunning enough to retain innocent Aditya and a conniving Sengupta so that the software project gets completed in time to show off to his UK client Mike Selling, who promises the business only if the software is ready. In particular, Madhu's layoff comes as a shock to the boys and Hegde. Seriously so to Madhu's family.
Madhu's father Anand Rao, a former senior bank official, blames timid Madhu herself for the layoff, humiliating her for her inability to retain the job. Rao is a frustrated man who had opted for voluntary retirement from service. His frustration stems from his present sense of uselessness, compounded too by the fact that he has lost all his savings over foolish investments in a fraudulent mutual fund company during the stock boom.
In contrast with his contempt for Madhu, Rao tends to idolize his son, Uday, who is also a software engineer in the US. Rao's hardworking and competent wife Nandini is naturally suspicious of quick-money schemes and has therefore continued to work in her own bank job. It is she who holds the family and its sanity together.
Now DK and 'Mother of the Year' contestant Indu set out to impress potential client Mike by fraudulently hiking up the share value of MPI with the connivance of politician Divakar, who is also the chairman of Pragathi Co-operative Bank. Divakar funds the purchase of MPI shares through a Mauritius-based crook, Charlie Spence and a Mumbai-based stockbroker Nimesh. Divakar cheats his own bank by lending the money against bogus securities. The plan is to show MPI shares in a bull rally in time for Mike's visit. The elaborate plan also includes a dinner meeting with the chief minister, arranged through Divakar's interventions, all to impress Mike.
But the plot goes awry (with crazy exposés, diabolical double-crosses, a rapid denouement… all leading up to a feel-good finale). Irrepressible humor, inevitable with a young team at the center of which is madcap Vasu, combines with serious and intelligent drama to inform this contemporary film with forceful new realism.
|
