the cause... the effect!

 Teaser clips from the movie Consensual, a non-linear narrative experimental on the idea storyline of cause and its effect.   On the surface, it is a story of a boy meeting a girl and soon, things escalate out of proportion. The chronology of events is established at the very end, thereby establishing what is the cause and what has been the eventual effect - thus, giving reason to the otherwise unexplained mystery in the story. 

A consensual encounter escalates into a rape situation! Can this happen to anybody and at anywhere? The plot unashamedly attempts to inspect such characters involved. 

Ricardo is a mama’s boy with dependency issues and questionable self worth. He is new in town. Spread over a timeline of few weeks under snowy winter conditions, Ricardo’s encounter with two women, Leila and Natie, eventually becomes a tale of cause and effect. The entire chronology of events is established at the very end in this non-linear narrative.

Derived experiences tends to linger about in our psyche and goes onto, in turn, influence our responses much later at some seemingly unrelated situation. We trace such responses of the central characters Ricardo and Leila as we see each being affected by their surroundings; in turn, influencing and shaping their reactions.

Ricardo, a mama’s boy with dependency issues and questionable self worth, is new in town. He is an intern with the reporting team of an online publication. His temporary accommodation doesn’t present much comfort. His sleazy, intruding landlord, Rod, often uses the space for his covert rendezvous with random girls and away from his wife; thereby forcing Ricardo to wait out in the snowy cold until Rod is done with his women. 

Although a workaholic, Ricardo is uptight in his personality, especially with strangers. With the onset of winter, snow covers everything around. Deep down, Ricardo is lonelier than ever.

Leila has dedicated her life to work and has been quietly building up her case for an impending promotion that would break the glass ceiling and see her moving into the main office located at downtown. Her co-workers also recognize and acknowledge Leila’s deserved claim to the position. 

During one of his assignments to cover an unrelated story at a warehouse situated at the outskirts of city, Ricardo unearths an elaborate setup of forced cheap labor comprising of erstwhile ex-convicts and gang members who are fleeing persecution and in return, offered employment at meager payments. Ricardo writes a compassionate essay, elaborating on giving these past criminals a ‘Second Chance’. This quickly becomes a meme and a campaign slogan for many such social, political and media organizations in the area.

Leila’s workplace employs an army of such low skilled workers from other areas with violent and criminal past. Her job position becomes a collateral to this ‘Second Chance’ campaign as the social movement starts getting momentum in certain neighborhoods with many of their schools closing down. As such, Leila is overlooked for her much anticipated promotion for a new guy who is part of company’s new outreach program and with whom the workers would relate more - as per the management. Deeply hurt and humiliated, Leila struggles to make sense of this rebuff.

Meanwhile, to celebrate the publication of his major article, Ricardo signs up with an online meet-up group of bar hoppers. Over the affair, Ricardo meets Natie, a charming fun seeking open minded girl. Although, Natie takes a liking to Ricardo, he finds it difficult to reciprocate and fails to move swiftly at Natie’s pace. This puts her off; forcing her to question the entire premise of why did she even put herself in a vulnerable situation like that with this stranger, Ricardo and that too, in his apartment. 

Things quickly escalate and go completely out of hand between Ricardo and Natie.

Few weeks later, Ricardo and Leila meet in an awkward manner, under severe snowy conditions. A seemingly harmless and probable attractive encounter subverts the expectation and soon turns ugly. Leila discovers Ricardo’s role in kick starting the ‘Second Chance’ campaign - that cost her dearly at her work. 

Is that the only motivator to cause Leila to seek vengeance? Or, is there another deeper agenda? Was Leila’s chance encounter with Ricardo a mere accident or was it an elaborate plan? 

Spread over a timeline of few weeks, Ricardo’s encounter with two women, Leila and Natie, eventually becomes a tale of cause and effect. The entire chronology of events is established at the very end in this non-linear narrative.

Consensual is a story of character examination. We trace the character arcs of two people, Ricardo and Leeila. The movie’s narration follows a non linear structure. 

Ricardo is new in town. With a bit of difficulty, he manages to secure a rented space. Rod, the landlord, allows Ricardo to use one half of the apartment. Rod maintains the other half of the apartment for his own discreet use, especially for his flings of casual encounters with numerous women while being still able to maintain relations with his wife. During such moments Ricardo has to stay out of the entire apartment as long as Rod is there with one of his girlfriends. In comparison to Rod, Ricardo feels like being in an arid desert with no connection whatsoever with any female.  These moments are extremely humiliating for Ricardo making him to feel emasculated and challenged as a man.

Ricardo works as an intern with the reporting section of a web based news portal. As part of his assignments he manages to unearth abuse of human labour at few of the factories and warehouses. At such places, Ricardo discovers most of the workforce consists of cheap labour; mostly migrant workers and even ex-gang members. At the behest of his superior and based on his notes Ricardo develops a compelling article pushing the narrative of second chances- to allow such ex-gang members and social outcastes to be accepted in the mainstream. 

Ricardo is a man child at heart; he is still dependent emotionally. He collects super hero figures and is still very fond of comics books. He is waiting to save some money to get a proper place all to himself in the next 6 months.

To Ricardo’s delight, his article gets published in the afternoon’s edition, excitedly he informs his parents of the good news. To celebrate his achievement he decides to go out and have fun. He enrols with an online meet and greet group. There he meets Natie a thrill seeking extrovert girl. 

Ricardo is introvert and sometimes gets tongue tied. Because of his initial inhibition, he is bullied by few guys in the group. Natie takes an instant liking for Ricardo and comes to his rescue. Natie and Ricardo, both tipsy, have their share of fun at the bar hopping excursion that night. 

On their return, Natie shows curiosity about his apartment. Ricardo realises that she probably likes him and thus invites her in. As they enter, Natie is all curious about the place where this guy lives, she instantaneously comes on to him. Already awkward about it, Ricardo freezes and is unable to reciprocate her advances.

Natie comes to her senses and immediately withdraws changing her mind about staying there any longer and proposes to leave immediately. Ricardo gathers himself and now makes his move on Natie. By now, Natie has completely shut herself from this stranger. Ricardo had been forced to feel emasculated in that very room numerous times earlier when he had to witness Rod having fun with other women while he had to sit outside. This time though he had his own girl. The sense of rejection was too much for him. He tries to force Natie to stay with him. 

Alarmed by the sudden turn of events Natie tries to reason with Ricardo initially but the situation quickly escalates into violent outbursts from both. Natie initially slaps Ricardo, this further wounds his already bruised pride. She then picks a baseball bat lying nearby and threatens Ricardo from advancing anymore. Ricardo has gone numb by the attacks. He rebels against being a doormat anymore. Ricardo gets violent and attacks Natie. Natie retaliates and hits his right leg with a base ball bat and later hits the injured ankle, this dislocates Ricardo’s right ankle joint. Running high on adrenaline and alcohol Ricardo goes on a rampage on Natie. To escape Natie runs in to the inner rooms maintained by rod for his fun sessions- the rooms which were off limit for Ricardo so far. As Natie moves aside the curtains to enter the space it opens the curtains for Ricardo to bring out his inner monster, as if. 

Ricardo loses all his inhibition and gets extremely physical. He lands blows on her, blooding her face and then eventually rapes her. Over the course of the incident, Ricardo feels invigorated and his inner demons comes to the fore. He regains his senses once he cums. Now Ricardo realises what he has done, the damage is irreparable and there is no escape for him anymore. Broken in spirit and in body Natie somehow manages to drag herself out of the hellish apartment.

Leila is a single woman dedicated to her work and aspiring for a meteoric rise in her career soon. She is introvert hardworking and possess a poor sense of humour. She tends to get confrontational at almost every instance of indignation. 

Leila shares a special bond with Natie going back well in to their childhood. Leila is devastated by what has happened to Natie at the hands of Ricardo. She recruits a worker at the factory that she works at, to teach Ricardo a lesson. These workers are part of a workforce comprising mostly of ex convicts and illegal immigrants from poor backgrounds. Leila leverages the power of her authority over the lowly worker to do the job for her.

It’s been few weeks, and Natie has scouted the location; chalking out their plan to ambush and beat up Ricardo. That same morning as Leila is preparing to go out she receives a call informing her of being shortlisted as the likely candidate to get promoted and move over to the main office. This is a big break for Leila and all her hard work seems to have been paid off. 

Just as Leila and Natie are trying to coordinate their plan of attack over phone, Leila has to undergo a series of encounters that adversely affects her psyche. First, it is the news that she has been by-passed for promotion. The appalling reason given for the new selection apparently is that the workers might relate to one of their kind and Leila might find it physically difficult to manage. 

This change seemingly has been driven by the recent social campaign of ‘Second chances’; originated from the article that Ricardo wrote few weeks earlier. With the schools closing down, this second chance movement has gained considerable momentum and the higher management had seemingly given up to this peer pressure. 

This infuriates Leila. In quick succession before Leila can recover she has to face a deceitful homeless woman, further aggravating Leila. She’s now deeply hurt, angry, confused and humiliated all at the same time. Leila meets up with Natie who had been trailing Ricardo who is on clutches; it’s snowing heavily that morning. Leila and Natie finds Ricardo desperately waiting for a cab to evade the snow. They witness a third woman sympathising with Ricardo for his leg injury; the very wound that Ricardo picked up in his fight with Natie. Ricardo seemingly jokes about it making the women laugh about it. Natie despairs and Leila loses her cool upon witnessing this mockery. As Leila tries to call upon her henchmen she learns that he is not coming anymore. Now it’s left up to Leila to take matters on to her hand. As the cab arrives for Ricardo Leila gets into the same cab from the other end. Inside the cab it appears that two strangers have availed the single available cab under the snow storm finding no other alternative.

Here Ricardo acts cordial and confident towards Leila she remains weary of him while trying to find a way to befriend him by indulging in small talks as if two strangers are interacting. 

The cab driver in his bid to extract extra fare from both passengers under the circumstances escalates the situation without any provocation. Leila vents out and aggressively takes stand to go with Ricardo to his apartment. She acts here without thinking, it’s a very aggressive move by Leila. She goes into the apartment with Ricardo the very same place where such a vicious incident happened with her friend Natie. As she enters the apartment, Leila feels disgusted by almost everything there. She still puts up the pretence of liking Ricardo keeping him off guard till now while seizing an opportune moment to spike his coffee with a drug that she had kept hidden in her bag. An unsuspecting Ricardo began to fancy his chances with Leila instead loses his consciousness. As he comes around he finds Leila using everyday objects found in the apartment to gag and tie him up. There. At the apartment, as Ricardo struggles to understand the motive behind Leila’s action. She on the other hand discovers the original article of second chances that Ricardo had written and which eventually led to Leila losing her job opportunity. Leila loses all her senses getting enraged and goes all haywire on helpless Ricardo; thereby exacting Natie’s vengeance.