Mili: Janhvi Kapoor’s Main Character Energy is what makes her a Gen Z star, and this is the film that cemented it

Kapoor isn’t an effortless actor; you can feel the work she’s putting in. And this isn’t a bad thing. It’s nice, sometimes, to see someone be willing to do the heavy lifting. In that way, Kapoor is the opposite of Alia Bhatt, easily Hindi cinema’s most talented movie star. In sports terms, Bhatt’s a natural talent, someone who can conjure brilliance on screen, seemingly with minimal effort. Kapoor has no choice but to overcompensate by perfecting tertiary skills; the dance classes and gym is the equivalent of an athlete spending extra time on the track. This isn’t necessarily a criticism. You can sense the effort in Cate Blanchett’s performances as well; Reese Witherspoon she is not.

But her maximum effort brand of acting could best be witnessed in her latest release, Mili. Released to minimal buzz and negligible box office — it is, as best, only a passable film — Mili is best enjoyed as a metaphor for Kapoor’s career. In it, a small-town young woman with big ambitions finds herself locked in an industrial freezer. On the outside, her single-parent father and secret boyfriend must put their differences aside and work together to locate her.

It’s as if Mili, the character, is the ingenue, and the cold storage freezer is Bollywood itself. One mistake can cost someone in her vulnerable position everything. Through trial and error, Mili must learn, in real-time, the skills that will help her survive. And without crutches like co-actors and something as basic as lines to rely on, Kapoor finds herself in her own parallel survival story. She has no choice but to act.

Better performers than her have struggled with the single-location genre of films. What Kapoor is required to pull off isn’t unlike what was asked of Sandra Bullock in Gravity or of James Franco in 127 Hours (with which Mili, coincidentally, shares composer AR Rahman). It’s a tall ask, and she more than meets the challenge with an almost instantly endearing performance. Unlike several of her contemporaries, Kapoor has the unique ability to play both vulnerable and vapid, sensitive and sassy. It’s a pity that filmmakers have so far avoided casting her as a character who probably lives in her geographical vicinity. But then again, how many movies are being made about rich JVPD scheme kids these days?

The fatal flaw of her only stinker — Roohi — was that it opened with the “Nadiyon Paar” remix, instead of closing with it. I’d imagine that most audiences, like myself, simply checked out 10 minutes into the movie, because there was no longer any incentive to continue. It really is that bad.

But Mili, perhaps by virtue of being a remake of a Malayalam-language film, is never boring. Like most films that have originated from our country’s finest industry, Mili spends half its run time establishing the characters and the setting. Similar to last year’s other great survival drama Malayankunju, it asks you to first watch the protagonist amble through the mundanity of life before sending them on an adventure. By then, the hope is that you’d be invested enough to root for them. In the case of Malayankunju, the audience was being asked to cheer for a truly despicable man, which, in a way, was a more courageous approach. But Mili is a saint from minute one.

We stick with her not because we expect major character growth, but simply because she doesn’t seem like the sort of person who deserves to die. And we root for Kapoor not because we expect her to suddenly develop the skills of her iconic mother, but because she reads sincere and hard-working on screen. And sometimes, this can afford a performer more room to experiment and make mistakes, especially in an industry where ‘likeability’ is currency.