Identity

Inspired by a true story, Identity follows a young girl Avantika (Naina Mishra) as she gets involved in an online relationship unaware of who her lover’s true identity is. When a film does not have much going on, it’s not at all a good thing. Prepare for the worst because the irony is that Identity struggles to find an identity or anything at all. 

Without trying to give too much of the plot away, falling for what she thinks is a twenty-two-year-old guy, Avantika is notified that the man whom she is in love with is not who he says he is. This creates problems for the real catfish as his use of a false identity becomes known to those closest to him. 

“…a young girl…gets involved in an online relationship unaware of who her lover’s true identity is.”

This film lacks much of what makes a film watchable. For starters, there are too many issues with the dialogue. Even though there is not much dialogue, the times there is dialogue, it is used in an anti-climatic and confusing way. Most of the interaction between just about all of the characters is done through computers via social media or through texts, which is something true about how we all communicate today in this modern world of technology, but I feel that it was not the intention of the director Amit Chauhan to make that connection between the real world and his film. 

At first, when the captions of what is being written on Facebook and in texts by the characters is shown it looks much like how millennials write today – a lot of abbreviations and words like “lemme” (let me) being typed. I felt that it was a nice touch, that was until the captions were typed the same way when the characters were actually speaking. For instance, when a character spoke out the word “please,” it would be captioned on the screen as “pls.” It happens quite a bit in the film and makes the dialogue that much more confusing. 

“…shots appears to be out of focus. It seems that it is an artistic way of shooting a film…”

Another thing that is a constant issue in the film is the blank staring montages. There are several montages that occur where it is literally the character staring blankly into nothingness and they all last about five minutes a piece. The first montage looks like a music video of Avantika staring at the sky and staring at trees. I feel that there could have been a better use of screen time than to have these puzzling montages. Even when not in a montage, the characters are doing an awful lot of staring at screens throughout most of the film.  

The director takes more risks when it comes to the camera shots, risks that, unfortunately, do not pay off. Quite a few shots appear to be out of focus. It seems that it is an artistic way of shooting a film, but of course, art is subjective. There are times where there are filters used to make scenes look more artistic, so you can see that Chauhan tried to show creativity. 

I feel that the film could have provided more seriousness with a topic as critical as false identity and adultery. If the ending is a metaphor for technology unfortunately killing relationships and/or people then at least this film had a message. That can be considered a plus.