When was the last time a filmmaker went for a close-up on Katrina Kaif’s face? Kaif, one of the most famous actors working for over two decades, is not entirely known for her acting prowess. And yet, in Sriram Raghavan’s latest directorial venture, Merry Christmas, the famous director closes in on that perfect face. What does it say? Raghavan’s brand of nothing-is-what-it-seems stories plant a doubt in the viewer, keeping us on our toes, forcing us to ask – what is Kaif’s face really conveying? Can we trust her affected delivery, when she talks about her drug-abuser husband, who is paranoid about her? It’s only then that the essence of this unusual collaboration dawns on us – why Raghavan went with Kaif. It’s precisely because Kaif’s face is hard to read that it lends itself superbly to the cipher that her character, Maria, is.We meet her at a busy Colaba restaurant with her daughter, Annie, where she has been stood up by a date. Maria aces the look of a hapless, young mother forced to spend Christmas eve by herself. Bumping into “Dubai-return” Albert (Vijay Sethupathi) at the eatery, the mother-daughter meet him again inside a movie theatre at Regal showing Pinocchio. As a show of courtesy, Albert offers to drop them home – which, she assures, is a couple of lanes away. Two strangers, accompanied by a little girl and a giant teddy bear, make their way to Maria’s residence on Christmas eve. She offers him a drink, puts Annie to bed, and they’re soon exchanging their life stories. They discover how they’ve both loved and lost. She suggests they go out for a walk. An Arijit Singh ballad plays in the background.The build-up for Sriram Raghavan is elaborate, and to his credit, not rushed. We know this is too good to be true, and Raghavan knows we know this. So, he deliberately makes us invest in this bizarre pairing – a diva from Hindi cinema, and the working-class hero from Tamil Nadu, who has burst into superstardom only relatively recently. Their different dialects, backgrounds, acting energies – everything seems to contradict each other. Only until it doesn’t. Kaif’s laboured dialogue delivery unmasks the performance within the performance. Sethupathi’s loose body language, firms up when the time comes. The Richard Linklater rom-com version of Merry Christmas, where two strangers falling in love over the course of a night, makes way for the Sriram Raghavan noir we all came to see. A corpse is discovered. People come clean about their past. The ‘love story’ is derailed, but is it really? It would be unfair to reveal anything more.About an hour into the 141-minute film, is when Merry Christmas truly begins. Characters go their different ways, new characters bump into them and the entire premise comes together. In typical Raghavan fashion, the film starts with a split-screen shot of hands grinding tablets, and another set of hands making podi masala and hiding a ring in it. As the film goes on, both scenes fill the necessary blanks.Kaif is committed for the most part, and is serviceable for the film. It’s Sethupathi, who towers over the film with his easy, assured presence. “I’ve left a lot of things unfinished in life, but never a bottle of chilled beer,” he remarks at one point. Raghavan laces the film’s with a wild supporting cast including Sanjay Kapoor, Tinu Anand, Vinay Pathak, Ashwini Kalsekar, Pratima Kannan and Radhika Apte. It’s in the second hour that Raghavan’s filmmaking really gets down to business, staging weirdly comical scenes, which we’ve come to expect. No one is who they say they are, everyone is lying to some degree. In a situation like this, who do you really trust? Merry Christmas is nowhere as dense or convoluted as Andhadhun (2018), but does that mean it’s a step down? It’s a simple, relatively contained premise – one that bears all the dazzling technique of a Raghavan film. The detailing in the production design is fantastic, the music is a mix of Pritam’s ballads and a mix of Christmas hymns, Western orchestra and vintage Hindi film music (the film pays tribute to Shakti Samanta). Raghavan also makes sure to include his love for food and alcohol, with a scene featuring Albert making dosas, and multiple characters gulping their drinks in more than one scene.The litmus test of Raghavan’s story lies in the final moments, when the audience becomes privy to the guilty party, and the thrill is will they get away? Raghavan drowns all the dialogue with a piece Western classical music as the film’s final reveal takes place, and all hell breaks loose. This is someone at the height of his mastery, able to get to the essence of a scene best among his contemporaries. Some might critique the film’s initial staging portions, for how long Raghavan takes. If you ask me, Merry Chritsmas is a feature-film sized flex by one of Hindi cinema’s most masterful filmmakers. We’re watching someone at his most assured. He takes his time, because he can.