In the director's words, Monologue is "an attempt to tell a story about storytelling." Its first part is about Ajayan, "a gentle and sensitive young man, an unwanted child abandoned by his mother and brought up as his own by the local doctor. His natural gifts cause jealousy at school, and his forbidden feelings for his foster brother's young bride fill him with guilt and remorse." (Derek Malcolm) The film's second half deals "with Ajayan's imaginings, ruminations, memories and fantasies. He goes over the same terrain covered in the first half, but now memory and desire seem to play cruel tricks. Or are they real?...Post-modernism, with its emphasis on fragmentation, plurality, self-irony, and the absence of a fixed point of reference, has clearly influenced Gopalakrishnan's sensibility. On the other hand, he is also drawing on the traditional art of Indian storytelling with its penchant for circularity, interweaving of narrative, and deployment of multiple viewpoints. The net result is that he has created a demanding cinematic style that is refreshingly contemporary and deeply traditional." (W. Dissanayake, Hawaii) Beautifully shot, carefully composed and paced, this complex film is sure to reward patient viewers.