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Release
date:
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Kerala: December 20, 2019
Delhi: January 3, 2020
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Director:
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Rosshan
Andrrews
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Cast:
Language:
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Manju
Warrier, Rosshan Andrrews, Anusree, Alencier Ley Lopez, Saiju Kurup
Malayalam
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As a
woman, it is hard to watch this film and not have a flashback to the humiliating
sexual assaults you have endured. In private and public spaces, millions of men
continue to grab, grope, stalk, flash their genitals at women, masturbate on
them or in their presence, sneer, leer, pass lewd comments, verbally abuse,
prod and crush breasts, pinch bottoms, fondle midriffs and in numerous other
ways molest, harass and dehumanise the other half of the human species.
So yes,
I understand Madhuri’s rage in Prathi
Poovankozhi and I share it.
It is
precisely because the female experience of such male behaviour is so routine
though that I also don’t understand Prathi
Poovankozhi. In the film, Manju Warrier plays Madhuri, a salesperson in a Kottayam
sari shop who is so enraged when a man squeezes her bottom on a bus one day,
that she makes it her mission to slap him at least once. She gets a range of
reactions to her intent, the sort we have all witnessed and/or personally faced
in reality – supportive women, women recounting their own repulsive encounters
with perverts, a woman fuming at that man, another fuming at Madhuri for not
moving on, yet another blaming her for the perv’s actions. One comment by an ally
bothered me though. This friend explains kindly that assaults are not unusual
and if Madhuri is unable to get over this one it is because such a thing is
happening to her for the first time.
Hold
on.
Wait.
Did I
hear that right? This woman who has inhabited the earth for what I assume must
be about three decades, who stays alone with her elderly mother, who works in a
crowded space, who takes public transport and walks down teeming streets to her
workplace each day, who attends social gatherings, this woman
has...never...been...molested...before? Ever? Not by a relative, a colleague,
an acquaintance, a neighbour, or even a stranger?
Never?
It is at this point I wished that writer Unni R. had hired women consultants for this screenplay. Because it takes a man to not know the frequency with which women get molested. It takes a man to not know that most women suffer harassment and molestation on multiple occasions in their lives. This is why, when as a woman you highlight an episode or two on a public platform, men friends think they are helping by badgering you to alert the authorities. Women allies, on the other hand, tend to just lend a listening ear, because they know that if a woman were to go to the police every single time she is harassed, she would have time for nothing else. That is how often it happens.
It
takes a well-meaning but partially informed man to write a heroine who is
molested for the first time in her life when she is in her 20s/30s/thereabouts.
Most
women who file official complaints do so when a particular attack drives them
over the edge either because of its severity or for some other specific reason.
Madhuri has no tipping point because she has never before been similarly
targeted.
It is a
measure of Warrier’s arresting screen presence and acting, and the genuine concern
Unni and director Rosshan Andrrews evidently have for women, that with all its
flaws, Prathi Poovankozhi remains an engaging
film.
The
title literally translates to “The Accused Rooster”, a play on words and the
gender of most harassers since “kozhi”
is Malayalam slang for a womaniser, a man of questionable morality and so
on.
Prathi Poovankozhi has been adapted for the big screen by
Unni from his own short story Sankadam.
It reunites Andrrews and Warrier after the former directed the superstar
in 2014’s How Old Are You?,
her comeback film following her post-marriage hiatus.
This
new film is both relatable and unrelatable, heartening and exasperating at the
same time. It does not have the intellectual depth of director Sanal Kumar
Sashidharan’s Ozhivudivasathe Kali (An Off-Day Game), which was based on another of Unni’s stories. That one
showed an astonishing grasp of caste and gender politics. It also did not
feature a single excessive moment, word, shot or scene.
Prathi Poovankozhi is weighed down by a string of
superfluities. The background score, for instance, shoots through the rooftop
every time the villainous Antappan comes on screen, as if to beat into our
skulls the point that he is the bad guy here. Madhuri has a mother with whom
she is inexplicably perennially impatient. Alencier Ley Lopez plays a close
family friend with whom she shares an entire playful song right at the start, which
seems to indicate that he will later play a crucial role, but he contributes
not a milli-inch of a difference to the plot.
Grace Antony from Kumbalangi Nights plays a sweeper who looks important and says ominous-sounding things, which suggest that at some point we will get to know more about her or her association with Antappan. Ultimately, she too adds up to nought.
More
troubling is the satellite character played by Anusree – Madhuri’s best friend
and colleague at the sari store, whose flirtations and relationships with several men
seem, on the surface, to have been written into the script merely for their
comedy value. A later conversation in which her deception involves a child-like
innocent man seems to indicate though that she has been placed there to also
assert that while the accused in this film may be a poovankozhi, the piddakozhi (hen)
in our society ain’t no saint either.
This
seems like Messrs Unni and Andrrews
pre-empting the wrath of men who claim victimhood and float the
hashtag #NotAllMen each time women speak up about discrimination. C’mon!
The
only satellite character whose presence makes a legitimate point is the
policeman played by Saiju Kurup. Through him we are reminded that sexual
predators are everywhere, which of course contradicts the point earlier made when
portraying the assault on the bus as unprecedented for Madhuri.
That said, the usually dependable Kurup’s acting here is semi-comical
and confusing. Competent artistes like Anusree and Antony are wasted in this
film. In Anusree’s case this is a pity because she does manage to be funny
while enacting her character’s shenanigans.
Warrier,
however, is well utilised and delivers an immersive performance as
Madhuri. Watching her, you can almost see her rage physically and mentally
consuming her.
Andrrews
has done well to step into the part of the creepy Antappan. Just seeing his
expression when he mauls Madhuri sent a chill down my spine. He should,
however, be held to account for roping Lopez into this project. When a man with
grievous allegations of sexual wrongdoing against him is cast as a considerate
friend of a woman battling sexual violence in a film, it is ironic, distracting
and self-defeating.
Cinematically
and ideologically then, Prathi
Poovankozhi is wracked with problems. Yet, whatever the criticisms of the
film may be, it is also true that it is convincing and moving in part because
Madhuri’s anger does not come from the same “avenging angel” cliché that
birthed 22 Female Kottayam and Puthiya Niyamam in which unreal women
survivors hatch elaborate schemes for vengeance. Madhuri’s actions in the final
scene are realistic because they stem from a spontaneous anger that causes her
to explode momentarily as a woman might, as women have been known to on
occasion, in real life.
The
see-saw of emotions she runs through in the closing minutes of Prathi Poovankozhi – a sudden confusion
in a darkened, decrepit house followed by a calm before an internal churn and
finally, an eruption – are handled perfectly, barring the loud music. Madhuri’s
brilliantly beautiful, credible rage lifts Prathi
Poovankozhi above its own failings.
Rating (out
of 5 stars): 2.5
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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102 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
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