Andrea Jeremiah's Anel Meley Pani Thuli is a thought-provoking but a problematic rape drama
Andrea Jeremiah's Anel Meley Pani Thuli is a thought-provoking but a problematic rape drama
There is no dearth of commitment from actress Andrea Jeremiah who plays a rape survivor in debutant director R. Kaiser Anand’s Tamil horror-drama Anel Meley Pani Thuli about a young woman determined to get justice after a gangrape. We have seen many films about sexual assault in the past where the assault victim is not ready to let go of the crime.
The perpetrators must be punished. At any cost. Good thought. A brave effort but sadly gone to waste. The dots just don’t add up in the plot. Mathi a woman of the world earlier shown to be bossing over a stalker at her workplace is shown shivering at a police station like an underprivileged tribal woman, answering the same leery questions about her assault over and over again by a middle-aged policeman who turns out to be the prime assailant. A mole on the neck convinces Madhi.
The coincidence whereby Madhi stumbles after a gangrape into the police station housing the perpetrators of the crime is clumsy writing at its most basic level. The principal performance is perpetually snookered by some ill-informed imbecilic writing by director Kaiser Anand who seems to think rape survivors have no options but to be brutally humiliated.
This is perhaps the reality about some sections of our society who are sadly denied even their most fundamental rights. But Madhi is not an ablaa nari (hapless woman). She is shown to be strong and assertive. Sadly her character is invariably inveighed by the tyrannical tropes of the rape genre: brutal law enforcement, apathy in the administration, taunting neighbours, etc. I even waited for her fiancé Saran (Aadhav Kannadasan) to dump her.
Saran remains the one strong supportive voice in this feeble universe of a lame meagre payoff. I liked how Saran takes on his family when they suggest that he should get rid of Mathi or when on the insistence of a senior respected officer he agrees to meet the three cop rapists for their apology.
Finally, when Madhi reaches the courtroom and tells her harrowing story to a female judge, the judge sighs and says, “I am surprised you could come this far.”
We are surprised too, considering the ridiculous hurdles placed in Mathi’s way. At the police station where she is held against her will, the three cops manhandle her again. A senior female cop arrives like a light in a tunnel, hears Mathi’s progressively harrowing predicament and then leaves her at the police station—with her three assailants!!!!—promising to return the next day.
Where is the police procedural? Why is Mathi shown to be so helpless when she is clearly not a Dalit woman with no option but to sink in her suffering? Anel Meley Pani Thuli could be marginally praised for doing a rape story with candour. But beyond that, there is little to laud in the plot. The entire treatment of the protagonist’s predicament is nothing but a gimmicky hurdle race where audiences are supposed to derive gratuitous relief in watching the heroine suffer.
My only takeaway moment in this desperately defeatist doom drama was when Madhi’s landlord knocks and says, “My daughter keeps calling from the US asking why I haven’t evicted you from our home. But I am with you. Keep fighting.”
If only the screenplay had spared some more of the fighting spirit for its protagonist, she wouldn’t have appeared to be such a wimpish candle in the wind.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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