"Juice" is an Indian live action short film and despite the English title (probably to attract non-Indian audiences too) in the Hindi language. Writer and director of these 15 minutes is the still relatively young indian filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan and the subject can be summarized here fairly quickly. It is about the discrimination against women in India, so it fits in well with the currently hot topic of behavior towards females in the light of the #metoo debate and it is no surprise that films scored millions of views on Youtube in under a year since its release, also from many many viewers outside the film's country of origin. The men are in the living room chatting like men do while the women are in the kitchen preparing meals for their men. Well, there are slight references to discrimination honestly, but I personally felt it was nothing really so severe that it deserves to be risen up against. Also the contents feel a bit bland. The women's talk about love marriage is okay and insightful at times, not always though, but letting the men focus on Trump stomping Hillary to the ground last year was not exactly the most creative choice to really make an impact. Completely aside from that, the whole scenario is one we see often, which isn't too bad. The women would have been confusd too had we seen a man join them in the kitchen, stay there and listened to their talks. And certainly it would have made an impact on what they were talking about as well, maybe even caused an equal moment of complete silence the way it does in the end here. Not as powerful as it tries to be. The temperatures and the air cooler are a solid inclusion though as everybody who has gone through a hot summer recently (the way we did here in Germany for example) can feel the women's sweating, especially with the cooking going on near them. So overall, the film has some decent inclusions and elaborates on a difficult subject that needs more (and better) movies made about it, but as a whole it falls flat and comes short in my opinion in what it is trying to achieve unfortunately. And on a completely different matter, we may want to talk about the ways in which women are treated in certain other parts in the world first, where an act like the female protagonist's here could have resulted in completely different consequences, perhaps life-threatening, but certainly far more grave than just moments of silence. All in all, a thumbs-down from me for this one. Don't watch.
Review of Juice
