Feed an untested randomizer with three stories and add few essential ingredients like you are Professor Utonium. What you get is Karma Takapa's second feature film, Ralang Road, a fragmented product of Lynchian mystery and spineless drama with bulbs of mediocre comedy. The film tries to escort you into the lives of select people in Sikkim through the lens of the cold mist that never seems to leave the air – whether from slices of cucumber in a barber shop or from a cat's fur in a hotel room. An outsider teacher struggling with "small-town mentality"; two students trying to get at him, and another character that the writer thought less significant are the primary containers brought together by a mysterious bag. Looking like an unedited version of a film student's first product, it is filled with dull shots that force you to take another road but enough loose yet intelligent references, one of which thankfully remind you of Edgar Wright's rapid quick shots, that make it not entirely dismissive. Watching Ralang Road is like trying to make sense of a doodle spattered by a 4-year old. You don't know what it means; the kid tries to explain it and you still don't know what it means. TN.
(As part of the Young Film Critics Lab 2017 at the 19th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.)
