A joy ride for all ages
FILM: Faster Fene
CAST: Amey Wagh, Girish Kulkarni, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Parna Pethe, Shubham More, Siddhartha Jadhav, Chinmayee Sumeet
DIRECTOR: Aditya Sarpotdar
RATING: ★★★
Debutant director Aditya Sarpotdar’s Faster Fene is a contemporary take on the classic and immensely popular children’s detective stories created by noted novelist B.R. Bhagwat. Maharashtra’s most famous detective Banesh a.k.a FaFe (Amey Wagh) here, is older and appearing for his medical entrance exams- so the target audience is already decided on quite cleverly. The boy from Fursungi has gravitated to wearing his favourite check shirts with pants. After all he is a growing teenager aiming to be a Doctor. As is wont though, mysteries continue to plague his young and alert mind. FaFe unwittingly manages to get inveigled by an apparent suicide. And from thereon, staying true to the spiritedness he exhibited in his childhood, he takes it on himself to ferret out the real truth.
This is an original story reimagined to fit into the world of Bhagwat’s novels. And it’s been done with the smarts, wit and ingenuity that Bhagwat himself exhibited in creating those much-adored stories.
Sarpotdar’s film, co-produced by Zee and Reitesh and Genelia Deshmukh spends wisely in creating and justifying a new, much broader and more widely acceptable milieu for the now teenage hero. While the city of Pune forms the main backdrop, it is Bhagwat’s (Dilip Prabhavalkar) introduction as one of the characters, that adds teeth to this telling.
FaFe’s ace sleuthing is supported by investigative efforts from a childhood friend who is now a journalist, Aboli (Parna Pethe), a former criminal Bhubhu (Shubham More), an auto driver Ambadas (Siddharth Jadhav) and B.R. Bhagwat himself. Appa (Girish Kulkarni) appears to have many secrets and the motley team will have to dig deep to find all the answers.
Sarpotdar makes things interesting by resorting to aerial footage of Pune’s iconic locales and keeping the pace rapid and eventful enough to hold everyone’s attention. FaFe is an iconic character in Marathi literary circles and soon it is likely to be just as formidable in mainstream cinematic circles.
Sarpotdar has done a wonderful job in giving life and memorability to a character that was hitherto hidden away within the pages of several children’s books. Kudos to him and his team for making this cinematic experience so wonderfully adventurous and exciting!