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The quality of grace is tragically missing in the other stories, except perhaps the story Ration directed by Francies Louis where class differences bubble to the surface in a quaint coastal Kerala town between two neighbouring families. Food plays a pivotal part in the equation between the two families and when the well-off blogger (Mini IG)’s rare frozen fish disappears from the economically modest neighbour (Kabani)’s refrigerator I was reminded of Maupassant’s short story The Necklace where the non-affluent woman loses her aristocratic friend’s necklace, goes from pillar to post to replace it, only to discover it was fake. Some such searching anxieties guide the course of the story which features the director Jeo Baby as the husband of the non-affluent woman.The gentle touch is ripped out of what could have been the third illuminating story on the dynamics of personal freedom Asanghadithar directed by Kunjila Mascillamani where women working in small dress stores in a huddle of airless shops, decide to protest to get a toilet built. The lack of private space to answer the call of Nature is an acute problem for women who cannot just go to a wall and relieve themselves. The story is brave enough to take on a taboo subject. But the treatment is turgid and humourless with the women discussing bodily fluids over cups of tea. After a while it not only gets tedious but also embarrassing when the men are used as boorish props in a set-up that is blatantly gender-biassed.Bodily functions acquire a new level of acceptance in Pra.Thoo.Mu. Directed by Jithin Issac Thomas this story of a thrashed and humiliated sewer cleaner is filled with a raging indignation; the theme of tyrannical injustice gets drowned in a flow of excreta. Shit happens, literally in this brutal story which luckily for us, is in black-and-white. Bodily wastes in colour may have been a bit too much realism to take. The volume of physical abuse and emotional violence in this story are irrationally exacerbated. Director Isaac may argue that there is no room for squeamishness in a society constructed on laws of inequality. Fair enough. But I still don’t want to watch the privileged bully politician (Siddharth Siva) literally defecating into the sewer clear(Unni Lalu)’s face. Hats off though, to the actors for being part of one of the nastiest depictions of social injustice ever put on screen.
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‘Freedom Fight’, though brilliant at times, finally chokes on its own bile
