After tea, Unni headed to his real job: an assistant director for a small-scale "new generation" film shooting in a crumbling colonial bungalow. The director, a bearded man in his thirties wearing a faded mundu and a Pulp Fiction t-shirt, yelled, “Cut! Unni, where is the rain?”

He typed the first line: The bus lurched, and the rain tapped the window like an impatient viewer.

That is the secret of Kerala movies. They don't need artificial drama. The drama is in the weather, the food (a single shot of beef fry and parotta can evoke more emotion than a breakup scene), and the aching silence of a monsoon afternoon.