Adaminte Variyellu

aka Adam’s Rib 1983 142’ col Malayalam d/st/co-sc K.G. George pc St Vincent Movies p Vincent Chittilappally co-sc Kallikkadu Ramachandran lyr O.N.V. Kurup c K. Ramchandra Babu m M.B. Srinivasan lp Suhasini, Srividya, Soorya, Rajam K. Nair, Gopi, Venu Nagavalli, Mammootty, Thilakan

An emphatic film graphically depicting the relentless oppression of women in urban milieus which are presumed to be more liberal than the Draconian conditions prevailing in rural India. The plot tells of three women. Vasanthi (Suhasini) has to mother three generations of her family in addition to her daytime job; she eventually escapes into madness and experiences the asylum as a kind of liberation. Alice (Srividya) is married to a ruthless businessman (Gopi) and seeks solace in affairs. When she is refused a divorce, she prefers suicide. Both the middle-class women push their rebellion to self-destruction. The third, however, overcomes her condition: Ammini (Soorya) is a brutally exploited maid in Alice’s home. She ends up in a home for women where, in a powerfully utopian ending, she helps her fellow women break out of the suffocating institution and rush right past the camera crew waiting in front of the gates, to freedom.

Film