Aashiq Abu deserves a pat on his back for such a bold attempt of what I can see only as cleansing of minds. The movie is all about ‘she’. Hers to begin with, hers to live, hers to take and she ends it all. The plot revolves around a girl, Tessa Abraham. She is any girl that you might bump into. A girl with her dreams of flying abroad to take her nursing career to the next level. To fall in love with that knight in shining armour and live a beautiful fancy life that one sees in the dreams. And then, somewhere amidst this run, as luck would have it, she meets Cyril. An education consultant, Cyril guides her with inconsistencies of her name in the passport, stamps a visa on it and puts her on a timeline to fly to Canada. But, as destiny would take it upon itself, the duo fall in love, move in together and live a life, what one is forced to reason as “living the moment”, without paying much heed to the logical ifs and buts that rise up in any relationship.
While the story may ooze cliché, the ways in which Tessa gets deceived and comes back to exact revenge is a delivery that every girl would want to look back with pride. The subtlety with which Aashiq affirms this delivery is a very fine line that differentiates this from clichés and emotional upheaval. A girl, who accepts to have lost her virginity with a previous, precious love is not bound to be received with respect of any kind from any man. Especially for one who has always had to refer into his belief system to make sure that he is ‘free’ by the books. It isn’t any different with Cyril. Once Tessa confides in him about her morally stained past, it becomes all the more easier for Cyril to take her for granted- take her emotions, sexual acceptance, love and boundaries with regards to that love for granted. And he cheats her. Until a point where he puts her in prison, in what can only be perceived as the easy way out for a guy to wash his hands off. How? Simple. Put some drugs into your girl’s purse when she is in the rest room. May be another cliché yet again. But for Tessa, thus and there begins a raw journey filled with shocks, pain, naked brutality and unfair, indispensable truth in prison.
Indian viewers are more accustomed to seeing only the dirty side of prison; goondas grouping up with big, burly guys who team up against the weaker, smaller and the not-so-significant. The formula doesn’t differ much when it comes to women. But, for the first time, a prison is shown for what good it can do to one. A place to derive immense strength, grit and determination from all the good and bad- a perfect example of the black, white and grey. A place where judgements don’t matter. You are inside for something bad that may/may not be any fault of yours; you are as good/ bad as the person next to you. There is no real judge to see who is the bigger wrong-doer. The safest place for a criminal to be, as portrayed in the movie. A place for a real person to view the world for the actual stand it takes on an individual irrespective of one’s worth. The ultimate phase of lowliness when one begins to ponder in self-reflection with and without choice, which ultimately gives nothing more than strength to any individual, let alone the weakest.
Tessa takes all this and more out of her time here. For the movie until then saw only her as the sweet girl who fell in love, a girl whose naivety was celebrated when she was in love, ridiculed when she was cheated and sympathized when she went through physical and mental torture. But now, she gets out with a chance to change all that. And when she gets out, she sets out to get her share of blood. With nothing more to offer anyone but the brutal strength that she derived while in prison. The rage burns in her but not in a murderous way. Not in anger or frustration or depression. But plain determination to see justice served the right way, in her own silver platter. And she kills. While this is just a portrayal of a fictional character in a hypothetical situation, the bare truth that puts its ugly face up is no different in today’s world. The line “you are after all a woman” delivered by Cyril to Tessa before she has her way with him, makes me, a woman want to think that this is what it has to come to. A criminal has to be dealt with this way and nothing is ever too much. This is right. And this is how you have to deal with such men. The mere arrogance of being born as one gets them as far as this in today’s world. They require no less. At the same time, it is again only due to the mercy shown in ways of love, care and forgiveness shown by the same woman that allows the very same man to rise again. To hurt her, yet again. And this is a situation that might not change for generations and eons to come.
The movie is all about a very rational end met to people who wrong, and in this case, men. A progressive and aggressive movie, made to portray a woman as bare as her instincts can ever be and can ever get, in her complete ways of rage, love, grit and pain. This is a movie for everyone to watch and made for every woman who is out there and who suffered, at the hands of a man, an easy judgment to begin with when she becomes an easy target to when she becomes that doormat for a man, giving him the alms to walk all over her yet again. This is for every woman who has insatiable pangs in her to burn that man who did this to her. This is as close as she can get to her revenge. While Rima Kallingal outdoes herself in taking up the entire script on her shoulder to deliver this woman in her to everyone, this movie would not have conveyed its message without its key factor of Fahad Fazil. The remarkably splendid ways of how Rima takes upon the weight of this movie from the word go, to make sure that this movie runs purely on what she expects to reach out to, to the girl sitting next to her. This, take a bow, is your lead -the female lead, and this is what leading is all about. And yet another congratulatory pat on Aashiq Abu and his crew for having made this possible. And it doesn’t end there, because this is yet another mark for viewers to take note of, when it comes to delivering a story in Malayalam Film Industry- an industry which has never failed in all these years and yet again, one which has been setting new records and making new marks unattainable by anyone who is even remotely close, in the Indian Film Industry.
A movie made for your daughter, where she can walk out with her head held high, walking several inches taller than all the men standing around. A movie that can only teach a girl what to truly expect from this brutal world and yet straighten her back and shove her in the right direction to push her into those inexplicable crowds only to watch her emerge out of it, used, washed out, hurt and tormented by her past yet brilliantly strong, admirably proud and brutally honest for being the woman that she is, ready to take the on the world.
