Sivaranjini’s superb, award-winning Malayalam debut feature Victoria, is almost entirely set in a women’s beauty parlour. The space is a women’s confessional, a refuge from men, a brief respite from lifelong slave labour to their families
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Malayalam cinema continues its run at the vanguard of Indian cinema. This time, through Sivaranjini’s Victoria, a chamber drama almost entirely set in a single room — a women’s beauty parlour. The film won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Debut Malayalam Film at the International Film Festival of Kerala, and Meenakshi Jayan, playing Victoria, won the Best Actress Award in the Shanghai International Film Festival’s Asian New Talent section. The film is one of a surge of feminist films in Malayalam in recent years, including Ullozhukku/Undercurrent, Kaathal — the Core, Feminist Fathima, The Great Indian Kitchen, Uyare, B 32 Muthal 44 Vare and Stand Up. Victoria was produced by the Kerala State Film Development Corporation’s (KSFDC) Women’s Empowerment scheme, to produce films by women filmmakers — that other states must emulate forthwith.
Victoria, a young woman, works in a beauty parlour with a sign: “no entry for men.” She is stuck with a rooster thrust in her care for just a day, by a woman going to work nearby, as it is to be sacrificed for the feast of St George the next day. The rooster is left in a corner of the salon, its legs tied, as Victoria slaves all day, performing a range of beauty services on a series of women—all the while concealing a storm within. On discovering her affair with Prajeesh, a low caste, autorickshaw driver of another religion, her dad has thrashed her. In the bathroom, she phones Prajeesh, begging him to elope with her or find her a room to stay the night: she can’t go home, or her parents will lock her up and get her married. But Prajeesh dismisses her as being too dramatic, later adding that if she can’t “adjust,” she is not worth the trouble alienating his family.
The beauty parlour is a women’s confessional, a refuge from men. They will be cared for, for a small fee, a brief respite from their lifelong, invisible slave labour to their families, and patriarchal CCTV 24x7. [spoiler alert] Everything she has been hearing about married life from the clients leads to a breakdown, and gives her the courage to call off the relationship with her scummy boyfriend. We don’t see any male characters in the film —except her boyfriend briefly on a phone video screen; and the rooster. The film ends with many roosters being sacrificed and cooked for the festival feast. Victoria’s own life mirrors that of the rooster: biding time, till she is sacrificed at the altar of an arranged marriage and/or patriarchy, either way a life sentence. [spoiler alert ends].
Debut director, writer and editor, Sivaranjini keeps the film in firm control. She distracts us from the claustrophobia of a single room film, by having an emotional thriller in Victoria’s relationship with Prajeesh, playing out over the phone. The film is a slap in the face of Indian men: women cannot get tenderness and care from the men in their lives, even after a lifetime of free slave labour; so resistant, and poorly trained are Indian men, in loving their women, in ways the women want. So the women pay to get it in a salon, for a small fee. Two scenes elevate the film — Victoria’s surreal daydream in misty woods, when her body gets wounds all over, like stigmata. The other is a bunch of schoolgirls, who sing a most delightful a cappella choir, about being trapped by laws, while waiting for “eyebrows” — en route to a singing competition.
Meenakshi Jayan marvellously captures the double lives of women: although burning internally by crushing humiliation, Victoria still smiles, as she offers tender care to a range of women, many of them strangers. The ensemble characters are good too. Anand Ravi’s cinematography, with long takes, is fluid and intimate. The editing is crisp, at 85 mins. Beneath that talk of eyebrows and pedicures, Sivaranjini packs a wallop. Definitely recommended.
Meenakshi Shedde, film curator, has been working with the Toronto, Berlin and other festivals worldwide for 30 years. She has been a Cannes Film Festival Jury Member and Golden Globes International Voter, and is a journalist and critic. Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com
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