Lucia (2013 film)

Lucia
Directed by	Pawan Kumar
Produced by	Audience films and Home Talkies
Written by	Pawan Kumar
Screenplay by	Pawan Kumar
Starring	Sathish Ninasam Sruthi Hariharan
Music by	Poornachandra Tejaswi Background music: Poornachandra Tejaswi Santhosh Narayanan Monish Kumar M. K.
Cinematography	Siddhartha Nuni
Edited by	Sanath–Suresh Pawan Kumar
Release dates	20 July 2013 (2013-07-20) (London Film Festival) 6 September 2013 (2013-09-06) (India)
Country	India
Language	Kannada
Budget	5 million (US$79,000)[1]
Box office	10.6 million (US$170,000)

Lucia is an Indian Kannada language psychological thriller film written and directed by Pawan Kumar.^[2] It stars Sathish Ninasam and Sruthi Hariharan.^[3]

The trailer of Lucia was released in February 2013,with the film releasing on 6 September 2013.^[4] Lucia premiered at the London Indian Film Festival on 20 July 2013.^[5][6] It won the Best Film Audience Choice award at the festival.^[7]

The film was remade in Tamil as Enakkul Oruvan starring Siddharth and Deepa Sannidhi. Actor Siddharth himself expressed his interest in signing the lead role in the remake after watching "Lucia". It was also among the films shortlisted by the FFI to become India's submission for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for the year 2013.

Plot

The plot is non-linear, and the end scene of the film shows the real beginning of the story.^[8] There are two main roles, one that is played out in the dream, and the other one in reality, and can be called Nikhil and Nikki^[8] The plot starts with the protagonist being in a state of coma and continuing only on life support. The film, from the beginning, tells two stories of same person, one in colour and other in black and white.^[9]

Sanjay, a detective from Mumbai crime branch starts investigating the incident that caused the protagonist's (Sathish Ninasam) current state. Sanjay going through his belongings stumbles upon some scribbled notes and a mysterious pill. Meanwhile police capture two suspects and interrogate them for information.

The story starts with Nikki is from a village near Mandya working as an Usher/“torch-shiner” in a Bengaluru movie theatre owned by Shankranna (Achyuth Kumar). Nikki suffers from insomnia and yearns for a companion. On one of his sleepless nights Nikki is contacted by a drug dealer who gives him Lucia pills as a solution to his sleeping problems. This drug is said to have the capability to help one dream the life they want but has the side-effect, that on discontinuation the same dreams shall turn into a nightmare.

With the help of the Lucia pills, Nikki starts seeing himself as being a successful actor called Nikhil surrounded by people he knows in the real world. Film actor Nikhil's life is depicted in black-and-white. Shankranna, the theater owner where Nikki works, had starred in a film in his youth funded by the leader of the goons, who now wants Shankranna to sign off his theatre for his debt. More events from the dream are followed by similar events in reality as Nikki falls in love with Shwetha (Sruthi Hariharan) who is a model in the dream and a waitress in the reality.

In the dream, Nikhil and Shwetha hit it off easily at the beginning but later friction arises when Nikhil expresses his discontent on Shwetha working in film industry. Meanwhile in reality, Nikki struggles to win Shwetha’s heart, who rejects him first due to his low salary and falls later for his humble character. Shwetha’s attempts to get Nikki educated and lead him to earn a better job turns out to be futile and also results in death of Shankranna in the hands of goons. Frustrated, Nikki chooses to leave Shwetha and continue to work in the theatre, despite the threats. Nikki redecorates the theatre and releases Shankranna’s film to the audience. He later reconciles with Shwetha, who agrees to marry him.

In the dream, Shankranna is kidnapped, and Nikhil rescues him with the help of police. In the process, all of the goons are either arrested or killed except for the contract killer. Nikhil feels Shankranna is not safe with him and decides to fire him. Nikhil breaks up with Shwetha and sends off all his servants so as to be alone. Later, a visually disturbed Nikhil finds himself in a thrashed room. Nikhil gets hold of the torch and through its light sees his life as a “torch-shiner” projected on the walls of the room.

Shwetha is now distraught with being in the lime light and understands what Nikhil had tried to tell her. Nikhil, the actor, meets Shwetha and tells her that he cannot decide if the present moment is a dream or reality but he is ultimately happy. Asking Shwetha to close her eyes, Nikhil jumps off the roof to the confusion of everyone present, including the contract killer waiting to kill him.

At present, Sanjay with the help of the suspects, performs a sting operation on the drug dealer and learns more about the Lucia pills. Meanwhile, Shwetha is caught in an attempt to kill Nikhil by pulling him off life support. During her interrogation, the whole investigating team along with Shwetha watches a re-run of an interview of the film star Nikhil. In the interview, Nikhil expresses his dissatisfaction of the stardom and reveals that he is actually color blind from an accident in his childhood. He tells the interviewer that he dreams of being a normal person and in fact in one of his dreams he is a “torch-shiner” who gets no attention from people and is happily in love with the dream of his life.

Sanjay is now convinced that Nikhil is living in his own versions of reality and chose to be in his dream over the real world by attempting suicide. Sanjay gets Shwetha to act and behave as if in Nikhil’s dream, enacts himself as a contract killer and shoots the comatose Nikhil in the head with an empty gun. Simultaneously, Nikhil, aware and alive in his dream world finds everything disappearing around him and is killed by a shot to the head. Nikhi wakes up from his coma to see the astonished doctors and Shwetha's relieved face.

At the end we can see Nikhil, Swetha and Shankaranna (who was dead per Nikhil's dream) enjoying pizza (Swetha worked as pizza waitress per Nikhil's dream) while they operate the projector of an old theater. Thus viewers could ascertain that it was film star Nikhil's dream to be a commoner like Nikki and it was achieved through Lucid dreams.

Cast

• Sathish Ninasam as Nikki
• Sruthi Hariharan as Shwetha
• Achyuth Kumar as Shankranna
• Sanjay as Sanjay (Mumbai police)
• Krishna as Deepak (Crime branch officer)
• Balaji Manohar
• Hardika Shetty as Kamini

Production

In December 2011 Pawan Kumar announced on social networking website that his next project, after the success of his directorial debut film Lifeu Ishtene, was going to be Lucia. For the next 2 months, he met quite a few producers and top actors and found it difficult to fund his film and that led Pawan Kumar to write a post titled Making Enemies on his blog. Three days after it was published, the response was so overwhelming that he decided to pitch the idea of inviting people to produce the film and Pawan Kumar initiated Project Lucia.^[10][11] Lucia is notable for its use of crowdfunding technique. It was funded by 110 investors who contributed to the project through a Facebook page and a blog run by director-actor Pawan Kumar. It was the first Kannada movie to bypass the traditional film financing mode.^[12] The director initially offered the lead role to model turned actor Diganth but he was later replaced by Sathish Ninasam, who has played supporting roles in many Kannada films.^[13] Lucia was made at a budget of 0.50 crore (US$79,000).^[1] Kannada language television channel Udaya TV bought the satellite rights of the film for 0.95 crore (US$150,000).^[14] Actor Sathish Ninasam along with the music director Poornachandra Tejaswi visited colleges in Davangere to promote Lucia.^[15]

Soundtrack

Lucia
Soundtrack cover
Soundtrack album by Poornachandra Tejaswi
Released	10 June 2013 (2013-06-10)
Genre	Feature film soundtrack
Length	27:40
Label	Anand Audio

The music for the film and soundtracks were composed by debutant Poornachandra Tejaswi, and background score composed by Santhosh Narayanan. The lyrics were penned by Poornachandra Tejaswi, Yogaraj Bhat and Raghu Shastri.^[16] The album has seven soundtracks.^[17]

Track listing
No.	Title	Lyrics	Singer(s)	Length
1.	"Thinbedakami 1"	Poornachandra Tejaswi	Poornachandra Tejaswi, Arun M. C., Bappi Blossom	3:55
2.	"Nee Toreda Galigeyali"	Raghu Shastri	Udith Haritas, Ananya Bhat	4:19
3.	"Jamma Jamma"	Poornachandra Tejaswi	Naveen Sajju	4:13
4.	"Yako Barlilla"	Poornachandra Tejaswi	Naveen Sajju	4:13
5.	"Helu Shiva"	Yogaraj Bhat	Naveen Sajju, Yogaraj Bhat, Rakshith Nagarle	4:01
6.	"Jamma Jamma Patho"	Poornachandra Tejaswi	Naveen Sajju	3:03
7.	"Thinbedakami 2"	Poornachandra Tejaswi	Sangeetha Rajeev, Nithin Acharya, Sparsha R. K.	3:56
Total length:				27:40

Release

PVR released the film on 6 September 2013 under their "Director’s Rare" category all over India. It released across Bangalore, Chennai, Kochi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Surat, Delhi with English subtitles.^[18] Lucia was also set to be released in Pakistan.^[19][20]

Critical Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Times of India	[21]
Wogma	[22]
Deccan Herald	[23]

Irrfan Khan and Anurag Kashyap praised the film.^[24] Anurag Kashyap tweeted "My birthday gift to myself would be lucia...".^[25] Actor Siddharth was "blown away" after watching the movie, he immediately called the director Pawankumar and praised him. Lucia was also in the race for India's official entry in Oscar.^[26]

The movie received positive reviews from critics. Ibnlive praised the film, giving it 2.5 stars out of 5 and said "With 'Lucia', Indian regional films have touched a milestone" while critiquing the film for including too many themes and subjects and thereby making the film "unnecessarily preachy".^[27] Sarit Ray of Hindustan times reviewed the film and praised its content and said Bollywood remakes of Tamil and Telugu films have managed to give the south a bad reputation. In such times, Pawan Kumar's Lucia, a Kannada film with English subtitles, comes as a surprise. Bookmyshow website said it is a landmark film for Indian cinema.^[28] Tribune praised the film story.^[29] The Hindu stated that Lucia is new type of Kannada film.^[30][31]

Box office

Lucia earned 0.95 crore (US$150,000) in satellite rights and 1.06 crore (US$170,000) in ticket sales in its first week in cinemas, outperforming its production budget of around 0.50 crore (US$79,000). Lucia was also released by PVR Pictures in some cinemas outside Karnataka, fetching around 8 lakh (US$13,000) from 13 screens in the first three days.

Awards

Karnataka State Film Awards 2013

• Best Music Director – Poornachandra Tejaswi

61st Filmfare Awards South

• Best Director – Pawan Kumar
• Best Supporting Actor – Achyuth Kumar
• Best Playback Singer (Male) – Poornachandra Tejaswi - "Thinbedakammi"

London Indian Film Festival 2013

• Audience Choice Award^[32]

Home media

The film was released in Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD 5.1, VCD Version From Anand Video Studio. It is the first Kannada film to be released in Blu-ray. The director, an advocate of alternative distribution strategies for indie filmmakers, was recently quoted as saying, "It’s time to set up your own virtual movie theaters on the World Wide Web which will be open 24×7 across the globe."^[33]

References

External links

• Lucia at the Internet Movie Database