film synopsis
Their everyday lives will be a honeymoon, the new husband insists to his wife in writer-director Jeo Baby's riveting evisceration of a patriarchal Hindu marriage. But the reality that the unnamed bride faces is a life of never-ending drudgery: cleaning after him and cooking elaborate meals that she can eat only after serving her husband and father-in-law. A trained dancer, she wants to teach, but her father-in-law considers a working woman dishonorable. Nightly sex is joyless and painful. The husband's piggishness extends beyond the bedroom, and he becomes enraged at even the slightest criticism. Nimisha Sajayan is enormously sympathetic as a spouse who can do nothing right in the eyes of men while she works slavishly to satisfy their every whim. The brilliance in Baby's storytelling lies in its repetition of scenes of kitchen prep, cooking, cleaning and awkward bedroom encounters that emphasize the domestic trap encircling the wife.