Mane (1991)

Rajanna (Shah) and Geeta (Naval) move into their newly rented house, a badly built room in a compound also housing a noisy motor- mechanic’s shop, allowing no sleep. The couple seek the help of Geeta’s aunt (Hattangadi), who knows a senior police officer. When the mechanic’s shop is closed down, it is replaced by the policeman’s nephew’s equally noisy video games parlour. Rajanna works in a factory building large earth- moving vehicles: in the end, when the couple decide to move into a slum, these vehicles are seen in a slum-clearance drive led by the police. The film lavishly deploys surreally symbolic images: a giant four-poster bed in a small room, colour continuities between tractors, large metal drums in the street and the haldi (saffron) which the couple put on the walls to keep pests away, the yawning vehicles in the garage and the destructive imagery of the video games. Kasaravalli’s first explicitly urban film.