I came away from director Praveen Kandregula controversial Telugu hit Paradha with mixed feelings. On the one hand any heartfelt celebration of female bonding, especially one that is done in the tone of fun, is welcome. On the hand this film blends a lighthearted tone with a kind of swarthy mood which seems to belong to another, far less, ebullient era.
Director Praveen Kandregula casts the lovely Anupama Parameswaran as Subbu, a victim of the purdah pratha in a village where it is believed that any woman seen in public without the veil is curse to mankind. That basic premise itself is so conveniently conservative, it serves to spotlight the director’s eruption of feminist impulses which follow the primitive prologue.
The set-up is transparently formulistic: put the female hero in a stifling patriarchal cave and then pull her out manfully. Paradha pulls off the gimmicky plot with some amount of acuity thanks mainly to the two principal actresses. Parameswaran as Subu oozes eloquence even when her face is covered half the time. Darshana Rajendran is Ami, the city girl who is going through her own male-domination trauma at her workplace. The two take off on a road trip, with a benevolent aunt(Sangeetha Krish) who has her own domestic spouse-bullying to deal with .
The voyage of self-discovery is over-loaded with gender statements. The film has nothing new to say about the place of women in rural and urban settings. But it does have some endearing moments among the three women.
The tactless plot is somewhat redeemed by the actors who seem determined to climb over the predictability of the situations.
The film is very proudly and ostentatiously feminist. But the treatment of sisterhood as a road trip gets progressively illustrative: signposts suggesting women’s rights are not exactly the panacea for gender equality. In the absence of subtlety in the treatment, Paradha feels more like propaganda for fairness cream than a genuine attempt to penetrate the core of gender discrimination.
Towards the end , director-turned-actor Gautam Menon (just why he spends so much of his time in front of the camera,is beyond understanding) shows up as a photographer who has clicked Subu’s picture and put her face on a magazine cover. The lifting of the veil without consent echoes Aparna Sen’s Paroma faintly. But the echo never acquires a cohesive shape in Paradha.
