There are a lot of films that have come out that have taken a tragedy, or normal situation and expanded it into an entire film. Middle Eastern movies like A Separation or The Salesman both come to mind. Yellow Bus is another such film. It takes the tragedy of a child and expands it into an entire story of why and how this could have happened. It’s not very pretty either.

Ananda Ishwar (Tannishtha Chatterjee)) and Gagan Ishwar (Amit Sial) are the parents of two beautiful little girls. They are of Indian descent but live and work in the Arabian Gulf. Like any parents, they drop their daughters off on the bus to go to school. While on yellow bus #22, Anju Ishwar (Keshethra Mithun) passes away from heat exhaustion. Her sister Revina Ishwar (Aarushi Laud) and the other children all get off of the bus including the driver and assistant. They weren’t paying attention to make sure all the children were safely off the bus and escorted to school.

This is a film of major mistakes and someone has to be held accountable. The mother of the deceased child goes above and beyond to figure out how this could have happened to her child. She alienates her husband and makes her surviving daughter’s life miserable until she gets some answers from the school and its administration, mainly Mira (Kinda Aloush). This causes a lot of issues for everyone involved.

The writer/director Wendy Bednarz creates a situation that any parent would dread. Having a child pass away due to the incompetence of others is something no one would expect. Throw in how the school employees and principal feel about the circumstances and you have a classic story of two opposing sides. One blames the other and the other tries to not let out what’s truly going on behind the scenes of this tragic situation.

Bednarz assembles a seller cast of actors for this film; the mother portrayed by Chatterjee is fantastic. He is like a bulldog holding on to its bones. Nothing is going to get in her way until she finds out what really happened to her little girl. The principal played by Syrian actress Alloush is very good as well. She is in a tough situation regarding where she fits in this bad situation. She and Chatterjee’s characters are at odds during the entirety of the movie. Throw in Sial and Laud’s characters and you have four performances that work very well opposite one another. Between the family dynamic and the school, this is difficult for everyone involved. The actors came to work in regards to how good these performances were.

This movie has a style that reminds me of other films similar to it. The look of the film is one of an in-your-face drama. It has a lot of close-ups of characters’ faces showing their emotions and sweat bleeding off their brows and so forth. The close-up shots are there in droves. Bednarz is going for too much of this kind of filmmaking. I would have rather had some different kinds of shots. There was a crystal clear cinematography that could have been used differently than it actually was.

Yellow Bus has a fantastic story with stellar acting all across the board. The problem I had with it was some technical things regarding the camera work and a little clearer ending that showed who was truly to blame and how this story could have been resolved a little differently. Bednarz maybe could have better been suited to write or direct the film, but not both. There are good parts to the script and look of the movie, but both could have been better.

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen