Farrey review: Young adult angst finds a voice in effective thriller

Salman Khan's niece Alizeh plays Niyati, a child prodigy raised in an orphanage run by an endearing warden played by Ronit Roy. (Screen grab/YouTube/Salman Khan Films)

In a lovely intercutting sequence in Farrey, a young girl raised in an orphanage gets schooled by her warden on the importance of upholding morality in the face of hardship. The young girl justifiably crones about the bigotry of the system. The fact that the poor are made to sweat for things the rich conveniently claim as their own. The scene intermittently cuts to her entitled friend from school. Contrary to a lecture in moral sobriety, she is gifted a luxury car by a doting, proud father. Privilege obscures so much, it practically bestows purity, as a possession of the elite.

Farrey is a welcome addition to the conspicuously lean cannon of young adult stories made for the big screen. Impressively, it is neither skimpy nor oppressively racy. Instead, it is mild-mannered, holds a working-class lens and wants to comment on inequality and class distinctions through the greasy dressing of a crime caper. It’s not all smooth, but it is never dull either.

Salman Khan's niece Alizeh plays Niyati, a child prodigy raised in an orphanage run by an endearing warden played by Ronit Roy. Niyati is naturally gifted at academia, but also lusts for the finer things in life – an expensive phone, a luxury car, a Starbucks coffee maybe. Her prodigiousness lands her in the capital's most luxurious school, alongside fellow urchin from streets Akash, played by the excellent Sahil Mehta. The premise somewhat apes the contingencies of Netflix's hit show Class. Two underprivileged but bright students find themselves in a school full of entitled, status-conscious kids. And though bodily lust and general depravity are missing here as a precursor to prestige, with this meeting of two wildly different worlds, something will give.

Niyati befriends Chhavi and Prateek (Zeyn Shaw in a role not too dissimilar from the one he played in Class) by proverbially settling into a role, the impoverished are designed to play for the entitled. She helps them cheat and score grades they can't achieve but, in ways insubstantial to their backgrounds, can afford. What begins as an ambiguous, mutinous kick, soon transforms into an organised racket of sorts. “Whatever can be earned, need not be stolen,” a teacher tells Niyati, in words that ring hollow when weighed against the indignity of having to earn that which to people around them is already provided.

When the point of anything and everything, even an honourable education, is money, does it really matter how you get it? It's instructive how it is the rich kids who see the broader scope of vice, fraud and human application. It takes their kind of privilege to be able to visualise schemes, and elect pawns for positions they will fit, but never outgrow. The ones who perpetuate these schemes, who dress into these roles with grit and desperation can merely enact their piece. It is, in essence, how a society stoked by capitalism works. How master and mind often meet to pluralise loot and plunder, as masterminds.

Directed by Soumendra Pandhi, Farrey casually denounces the cinematic rulebook. There are no triangles of love, lust or jealousy here. This is strictly a thriller coaxed from the idea that at that pubertal age, survival and aspiration collaborate in ways that smudge other preoccupations of adolescence. Notwithstanding the one party sequence, we aren't offered titillating exhibits of skin or drugs. The grimness is instead coded in by the disparity in power and the diverse moralities it eventually births. To the rich, privilege is a continuum they will find ways to sustain. To the poor, it is the glassy ceiling they approach with the trepidation of a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Be callow or polite and you might miss it. Be harsh and overbearing, and you might break what it represents.

The performances, considering these are all young actors, are commendable. Alizeh as the unremarkable, but gutsy protagonist is adequate but the film is stolen by the exceptional Sahil Mehta. Akash's arc is complex, multi-layered and played with nervy finesse befitting of a character trying to find where he fits in a configuration defined by everyone but him. He is at once the tragic emblem and the reckless but endearing proponent of anti-classicism.

The fact that a young adult story has made it to the theatres, is maybe achievement enough for a pipeline starved of narratives set in this space. India is predominantly young, but our stories fail to address a burgeoning, restless market. The needle has begun to shift on streaming and with Farrey, followed by Zoya Akhtar's Archies, a new dawn may well be in line. Sure Farrey isn't perfect, has a distracting sound design and doesn't trust its young actors to summon a more contemplative last half. It races through in jest, excited and uncontrolled, raw and uninhibited. It’s precisely what we need. Cinema that is flawed, pertinent, thrilling and youthful.