A Return and A Reset
It’s these adults that shape Three of Us, a film whose simplicity reflects the optical illusions of remembrance. The grown-ups in this moment are like humans walking through a dusty dollhouse, a tone that reveals the disorienting phrases of adulthood. Every narrative gesture looks ordinary. The dryness is there to fathom. Every scene feels a little less striking than we expect it to be – and every place, a little less dramatic – because it mirrors the perspective of characters who’re confronting the smallness of memory lanes. This dichotomy of nostalgia is embedded into the premise: Shailaja Patankar (Shefali Shah), a middle-aged woman at the onset of dementia, is overcome by the urge to revisit a small Konkan town from her past. Shailaja’s husband (Swanand Kirkire) accompanies her on this week-long trip – a return to her beginning, but also a pilgrimage to a time she worked hard to forget. She seeks out her old school, home, friends, food and feelings before it’s too ‘late’. She seeks out a man named Pradeep Kamat (Jaideep Ahlawat) – once an incomplete childhood love – who becomes her tour guide through the chiselled remains of their history. He shows the couple around, follows her, watches her, and sees his hometown through her last-ditch gaze. There is no resistance at any corner. Shailaja is welcomed with open arms, almost as if everyone is conspiring to grant her this wish.
The title refers to these three people, but it mainly alludes to the three identities of a protagonist with a perishing perception of herself: Shailaja was someone, she is somewhere, and she soon will be nowhere. However, the condition of dementia isn’t staged as an impending tragedy. It is, in this context, also a licence to break free from the shackles of service. A woman who has spent decades as an associative noun – mother, wife, daughter and worker – is now on the cusp of a dissociative verb. So she looks for the Shailaja that was still an individual, almost as if she were manipulating her fractured memory back to the time she felt most alive. Shefali Shah somehow manages to embody a tricky phase between being lost and found, between forgetting and forsaking. When she listens, for instance, her face suggests that she’s pretending to understand. You can tell that she is battling to preserve her intellectual agency. When she smiles, she is only imitating an expression of familiarity.
The fear of not knowing is evident, and it’s to the screenplay’s credit that Shailaja and her husband strive to hide her condition during the trip. As a result, for the others, she is only someone who’s had the courage to follow her instincts and turn back time. They aren’t treating her specially; this is just who they are. What this detail also does is allow Pradeep to be a former flame who gets inspired by Shailaja’s sudden appearance. A bank manager moonlighting as a writer, he starts composing poetry again, unaware that her presence isn’t some romantic bolt from the blue; she is only there before she isn’t. There’s no such thing as an average Jaideep Ahlawat performance, and Pradeep is another example of how the actor blends into an environment rather than a role. Even though Pradeep is moved by Shailaja’s return after 28 years, his soul is rooted in the gentle attachment with his wife. It’s the kind of companionship that’s secure enough to withstand the possibility of an old story and a new ending.