The Valley

Story:

A successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur tries to find out why his young daughter committed suicide as he struggles to save his marriage and run his company.

Review:

Neal Kumar (Alyy Khan) is a first-generation immigrant from India has come up in life the hard way. Now, a successful CEO of his company in San Francisco with two loving daughters and a beautiful wife, life could not have been any better for him. But when his youngest daughter Maya (Agneeta Thacker) commits suicide, we get to know that all is not well with the picture-perfect family. As a means of trying to make sense of the tragedy, Neal traces back the movements of Maya in her last months to find out just why, his seemingly ‘normal’ daughter, in a family that resembles the definition of the American Dream, would take her own life.

As far as performances are concerned, almost all cast has done a fine job. Ally Khan is convincing as the grieving father and has underplayed the dramatic role. Suchitra Pillai as a housewife, who has some secrets of her own, is also up to the mark as someone who is constantly torn between fulfilling her duties as a mother and a wife versus what she owes herself as a woman. Agneeta Thacker, who has mainly worked on American films and TV shows, too, is perfectly cast as the timid girl who tries her best to keep everyone around her happy, yet succumbs to the pressures of being a young adult.

And while the filmmaker is asking the right questions when it comes to teen-suicides, but the manner in which she says it, is not that interesting. While you empathise with Neal as the bereaved father, it is tough to be interested in his journey. Also ambiguous is the manner at which he arrives at the conclusion of what it was that took the life of his daughter. It’s almost as if he is chasing several dead ends, yet deriving a vague meaning from them all. The whole angle about how technology is driving people further away has just been given lip-service by the filmmaker. About its emotional depth, ‘The Valley’ is definitely not among the important films that deal with the concept of death and loss.