Sweet Kaaram Coffee review: Lakshmi, Madhoo and Santhy shine in a predictable series

Nivi (Santhy Balachandran), Kaveri (Madhoo) and Sundari (Lakshmi) are from three generations and feel the pressing need to get away from the patriarchy. (Screen grab from trailer of Sweet Kaaram Coffee on Amazon Prime Video)

A road movie with female characters is seldom about just having fun. It’s most often about how seldom they’re allowed to have fun. It isn’t where they’re travelling to that matters but what they’re getting away from. Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise (1991) is probably the most iconic of these films. Closer home, Bramma’s Magalir Mattum 2 (2017) had three middle-aged ladies (Bhanupriya, Saranya and Urvashi) going on a road trip along with an enterprising young woman (Jyotika).

Sweet Kaaram Coffee, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is in a similar vein – Nivi (Santhy Balachandran), Kaveri (Madhoo) and Sundari (Lakshmi) are from three generations and feel the pressing need to get away from the patriarchy. They live in a house with the signboard ‘Rajaratnam’ – he is son to Sundari, husband to Kaveri and father to Nivi. But what are they as individuals? That’s the quest of the road trip.

Created by Reshma Ghatala and directed by Krishna Marimuthu, Swathi Raghuraaman and Bejoy Nambiar, the eight-episode series has three excellent actors in the lead, and that is its greatest strength. Lakshmi’s Sundari doesn’t see herself as just a paati (grandma), she still wants more from life though her son is unable to see it. Madhoo’s Kaveri is an earnest, submissive wife who is taken for granted by everybody. Santhy’s Nivi is a cricketer with a fair share of insecurities and a sportsman boyfriend who is uncomfortable with her career choice. Fed up of being knocked around by the world, they decide to embark on an adventure.

Sweet Kaaram Coffee is eager to make these women as relatable as possible to the viewers. But that’s also its fundamental problem – we’ve already seen these characters and their conflicts in cinema and OTT. Most of the episodes, therefore, make you experience a strong sense of déjà vu and the characters turn into types rather than real people. The predictability extends to the plot development and conflict building, and it’s not until the last two episodes that you feel the series is going somewhere.

Until then, the episodes are full of random and not particularly original events – from the women landing at a colourful folk festival to staying at a quirky motel and exchanging gyan with “fascinating” strangers who influence their thought process (among them is a biker-doctor who looks like Arjun Reddy but has a sensitive soul). The problem is that the writing feels too deliberate – you know exactly how each scene is going to play out, and there are no surprises. This is especially a drawback in the web series format where viewer interest significantly dips when the episodes don’t have intriguing endings that make you want to watch more.

There’s a difference between simple writing and simplistic writing, and Sweet Kaaram Coffee falls into the latter bracket. Take the episode with a white man (Alex O’Nell) and his carefree girlfriend (Ayesha Kapur); it plods along the tired trajectory of the individualistic, commitment-phobic West versus the importance that the East gives to the institution of the family. While the Orient sighs at the passion of the firang couple, the Occident glorifies the close bonds within the Indian family. There is no attempt to delve into the changing nature of modern relationships or interrogate cherished ideas about love and family. It’s as if globalization never happened.

Everything feels superficial and stretched thin till Episode 7, when suddenly, the series picks up pace. Lakshmi’s Sundari has the most interesting arc of the three, and it would have been wise to foreshadow the conflict earlier in the series. The hints that we get suggest another (very) predictable arc, and not everyone will have the patience to sit through episode after episode till we get there.

Lakshmi is masterful in her performance as Sundari who has secrets of her own. Watch her gaze at herself and touch her hair or cringe at her son’s assumptions about her attitude towards life – without speaking, in subtle gestures and expressions, she captures the spirit of her character even when the lines aren’t great. Her special friend, too, is wonderful in the role (elaborating on this would be a spoiler) as is Ranjini Prabhu who plays Sundari’s younger version. Madhoo acts her heart out as the wilting Kaveri but Kavin Jay Babu who plays her stodgy husband doesn’t quite pull off the role. None of the men, in fact, rise above the obvious. Santhy, too, holds her own in this talented trio. She looks believable as a sportswoman, and is especially impressive when she displays her insecurities around her pretty mother.

But there aren’t enough of these edgy, honest moments in Sweet Kaaram Coffee. All the women look uniformly lovely through the road trip – their clothes are always ironed and they never repeat a set. They don’t have much money with them but think nothing of splurging in an airport spa. Such inconsistencies make the premise a lot less convincing. Some grime, dust, sweat and blisters would have been nice.

There are too few films and series centred around women characters in the south, and it’s heartbreaking when the rare one that comes along fails to offer anything new. Are women’s lives so uninteresting and boring that the only great adventure they can have is seeking love? Can they not talk about anything other than problems of the heart? Can they not let loose their emotions and look ugly for a second? Too sweet, not enough spice and coffee too dilute, Sweet Kaaram Coffee is yet another squandered opportunity.