Charlie 2015

Tessa, Parvathy Thiruvothu is a graphic artist who leaves home to dodge an arranged marriage and finds refuge in a rented, dilapidated apartment arranged with the help of a journalist friend. At first, she resents the crumbling room, but her attention quickly shifts when she discovers that the prior tenant was a carefree vagabond named Charlie, Dulquer Salmaan. As she begins cleaning, a photo and a graphic novel surface, centering on the night of the previous New Year’s Eve. The comic’s sketches recount a small-time thief attempting to break into Charlie’s room, only for the two men to team up and creep toward the roof of a neighboring house. There, they encounter something so shocking that their faces in the final page are etched with disbelief. This abrupt ending fuels Tessa’s curiosity about what happened next and who the room’s former occupant truly was.

Driven by questions, she starts tracing the people drawn in the man’s sketches. Her search leads her to Charlie’s confidant, a man who acts more as a friend than a father, and to Pathrose, a boat servant who unravels the layered history of Mariya/Queen Mary. Mariya is depicted as a middle-aged woman who endured years of exploitation at the hands of her husband. One birthday night, Charlie takes the terminally ill Mariya to the sea, but she chooses the moment to leap into the ocean, leaving him overwhelmed with grief. Later, news arrives that Charlie has been staying in a hotel, and a caretaker hints that he had rescued Mariya’s daughter from her father’s clutches, sparking further intrigue about their lives.

A twist of fate then brings Tessa to a chance encounter with the thief from the drawings. He recounts that on that New Year’s Eve, they met a young woman on the brink of suicide, and Charlie intervened to keep her from harming herself; she escaped on a motorcycle before authorities arrived. This revelation prompts Tessa and the thief to locate the woman’s home, discovering her to be Dr. Kani Aparna Gopinath in the medical world, as described by her father.

Tessa’s quest shifts to Ooty, where she seeks out Dr. Kani to piece together the chain of events. Kani shares that she felt crushed by a broken relationship while performing her first independent operation, an outcome that led to the death of a 10-year-old girl. Distracted by the media storm and her own despair, she found herself on the edge again on New Year’s Eve until Charlie steps in to anchor her at a shelter run by Kunjappan, an old man who himself awaits the return of his teenage love, Thresia, who appears to be a nun now. The journey to understand Charlie’s world continues, and Tessa’s stay in Ooty eventually ends when her brother and mother come to bring her back home.

Back home, a somber Charlie reappears, bringing with him Thresia, reuniting briefly with Kunjappan’s long-lost love, only to miss each other again by a few seconds. The next morning, Charlie is prompted to confront the truth about Tessa. He decides to attend the Thrissur Pooram festival, hoping she will find him there. At the festival’s magic-filled grounds, he performs and notices Tessa in the crowd. She approaches him, and for a moment, she tests the waters by introducing herself as Shruti Raman, letting him believe he has encountered the wrong person. But as the festival unfolds, Charlie’s playful antics give way to a genuine confession: the woman is indeed Tessa, and he reveals his own name as Charlie. In the final moments, the pair walk together toward an uncertain but hopeful future, stepping into a new life side by side.