C U Soon is presently streaming on Amazon Prime Video in India

Writer-Director: Mahesh Narayan

Stars: Fahadh Faasil, Darshana Rajendran, Roshan Mathew

India release date: Sep 01, 2020
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Language: Malayalam
Duration: 98 mins

“C U Soon, frisky in pace but grounded in unwavering technique, is an affirmation of cinema’s capacity to be creative and hopeful no matter how grave and protracted a crisis is… The mysteries of C U Soon couch a fond collective hope of a return to cinema as we know it when the world gets to the other side of the pandemic-erected tunnel. Until then, a film such as this, a dazzling thriller that teases every ounce of strength from the mystery genre, will enthuse us to keep the faith. See C U Soon without ado.”

Rating: 4 stars | Full review

Saibal Chatterjee, NDTV

“C U Soon seems to be asking: Do you really need to step out anymore, even to watch this movie? Have you wondered what you’d look like if you placed your phone on a low-level tabletop and its camera gazed at you? Wonder no more. The sound you hear is that of a thousand pre-digital age cinematographers screaming. Such a shot, those days, would be considered “grammatically wrong”? Who would focus a camera on the scruffy underside of a man’s chin? But this is our casual, anything-goes world now, where cameras on phones and cameras in the cinema blend and bleed into one another. You can do anything, everything.”

| Full review

Baradwaj Rangan, Film Companion

“The one thing that’s disconcerting in most of these shot-on-camera-phones films is the lack of depth. C U Soon makes up for this by slowing things down, lingering on expressions, and allowing us to observe what’s going on… Anything that Faasil does (Maheshinte Prathikaram, Super Deluxe, Kumbalangi Nights) brings joy: here again, he gives us a complex character — not really likeable, cutting corners, borderline misogynistic — and then he makes us see how circumstances can make a little dent, that change is a possibility.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review

Shubhra Gupta, Indian Express

“You watch Faasil all through C U Soon from an oddly top-angle image, taken from what’s supposed to be his laptop camera. Which is always switched on to capture his every move, through mug-shots. This is partly because his character is always at work, and going through video-conferences. But mainly because it is the only way you can capture him in the movie. That is the way the screenplay has been drafted to make sure not a single scene occurs between actors and a regular camera handled/placed before them.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review

Mayank Shekhar, Mid Day

“C U Soon… has heralded a unique storytelling technique in Indian cinema, making the case for minimalism in a country where the popular medium has tended to be extravagant and larger-than-life… The idea of telling a story entirely through screens may not be new (it has been done before and quite well in films like Searching) but Mahesh’s film isn’t only about the form. And the theme justifies the choice — an online relationship that takes a mysterious turn. How much can we tell about a person when our bond with them is defined by how much they reveal through a screen?… Malayalam filmmakers in recent times have been looking to make big budget films with larger-than-life themes. C U Soon, however, is a reminder of what the industry does best — solid storytelling about real life and real people, where the script is the hero.”

| Full review

Sowmya Rajendran, The News Minute