Parthiban’s ‘Teenz’ is a set of interesting ideas that do not come together in a satisfying way

The film stars a bunch of teenagers and Yogi Babu. It starts off like a ghost story and undergoes a genre shift, but the writing needed to be better.

Looking back, it seems fitting that Parthiban’s debut as a director was called Pudhiya Paadhai, i.e., New Path. Because that is the thing that has come to define him, the fact that he will always find a path to give us something new. Take Teenz, the latest film he has directed. In the opening credits, he doesn’t use the Tamil word for director. He says “uyir” and “uruvakkam”, as in, this film was birthed and developed by Parthiban. Again, it’s something new. The setting is new, too. When was the last time you saw teenage kids in an apartment complex – eight boys, five girls – as the protagonists of a story? These teenagers are well-cast. I have a feeling that a handful of them will go on to become very good actors.

At first, we see them complaining about their parents. Sometimes, they sound like kids. Other times, not. We see a girl with a love letter her father wrote to her mother. Now, these parents are on the verge of separating. The girl says: “The love letter is here. Where did the love go?” It grates, and it’s odder when these kids seem to be channeling their inner  Parthiban with wordplay. Sample line: “Paatha kick-ah irukke, pesina makka irukke…” A student who is regarded as outstanding is first seen… standing outside school. Soon, these kids take a trip to the village home of a grandparent, and two of them disappear, as does a tree. One of the bunch says: “Two are missing – tree is also missing.” (Get it?) Get past the wordplay, and you sense something sinister. Is this a ghost story for kids, and with kids?

By the end of the movie, it’s hard to say. Teenz is both overstuffed and undercooked. Parthiban keeps throwing things (and people) at us: Yogi Babu, a godwoman, an underprivileged boy in the midst of our upper-middle-class protagonists, honour killing, a python, a love angle, a cop on the trail of these kids, a rant about spoiling the earth with plastics,  another rant about artificial reproductive techniques like IVF – and last but not least, a major genre shift. I won’t tell you what it is, but the film just doesn’t cohere. It comes across like a whole bunch of interesting ideas that are yet to be developed. We get a Christian girl who shows compassion to the underprivileged boy, and we get the equivalent of the Lamb of God. But as fascinating as this sounds, it doesn’t deliver the dramatic punch you expect. Cinematographer Gavemic Ary keeps things interesting with vibrant frames and a variety of spatial compositions – but the film stays at the level of a new idea that has yet to find the path to be executed well.