Arimpara

A bizarre, not to say excruciating oddity, this fable about complacency and guilt starts in realist mode as it depicts the happily comfortable life of Kerala landowner Krishnanunni, his loving wife and his young son. When a mole develops on his chin, the liberal but devout traditionalist refuses to have it surgically removed, preferring the herbal medicines favoured by his ancestors, who, we're told, gained their wealth by slavery and slaughter. Gradually the wart grows, rendering the man's face a black miasma, and turning his life into one of shameful solitude. By the end, with its echoes of David Cronenberg, the abandoned Krishnanunni is all but consumed by the ravenous carbuncle, which echoes his family's misdeeds by going on a homicidal rampage. An over-literal approach to metaphorical narrative more suited to the printed page than to cinema combines with poor special effects and make-up to create a folly quite astonishing in its tonal shifts.