Kolangal

aka Caricatures 1980 133’ col Malayalam d/s K.G. George pc Falcon Movies p K.T. Varghese, D. Philip pc Falcon Movies st P.J. Anthony c K. Ramchandra Babu m M.B. Srinivasan lp Menaka, Rajam K. Nair, Gladys, D. Philip, Venu Nagavalli, Nedumudi Venu, Thilakan

A story set in a Kerala village where rumour and gossip spread like wildfire. Kunjamma (Menaka), the only daughter of an overbearing mother (Nair) with a biscuit stall in the market, sells milk to the villagers. When she befriends a fashionable urban youth (who works as a production assistant for a film company) (Nagavalli), gossip ruins her reputation and her mother threatens suicide if Kunjamma does not agree to marry the only man still willing to accept her as a wife: an old but well-off lecherous drunk (Thilakan). Set in the Kerala matriarchy, the film presents its several village characters as not always good but essentially benign, contrasting this edenic world with the corruption introduced by the urban youth (shown wearing garish clothes and dark glasses). The contrast is, however, undone by the mode of filming itself, with continuously saturated colour and emphatic performance modes.

Film