Feminine lives with slave consciousness and psychos with male consciousness: Ammu is a film directed by Charukesh Shekhar starring Aishwarya Lakshmi and streaming on Amazon Prime. Ammu again shows the familiar ideas and life environment.
Through the film, the glimpse of women’s lives trapped in married life is exposed before the audience. Through Lakshmi Ammu, Aishwarya poignantly portrays the helplessness of women who face horrific domestic violence after marriage and survive in homes as ‘model’ housewives for the rest of their lives.
The film revolves around the married life of Ammu aka Amuda and Ravi played by Naveen Chandra. Ravi is a psycho influenced by traditional masculinity. Even the slightest movement from Ammu incites violence in the police inspector.
On many occasions, Ammu tries to get out of her husband’s cruelty, but her sense of servitude keeps calling her back. Ravi, who brutally beats his wife on one occasion, transforms into a loving husband who begs for her forgiveness on another occasion. Ammu is unable to realize that Ravi’s love is fake even when he is brutalized again and again.
At one point in the film, Ammu reveals to Mala Parvathy’s character, who plays her mother, that ‘he beat me. But when such an opportunity came into her life, Ammu’s mother replied with the advice she got that day.
Amma replies to Ammu by correcting her advice that a woman who feels a man’s love is bound to feel a man’s anger. Amma sets the example in the story by giving Ammu the right to decide what she wants to do next in her life. But Ammu is going back to her submissive life with him.
Bobby Singha who plays the role of Prabhu, Mala Parvathy who plays Ammu’s mother, and Anjali Ameer also gave impressive performances in the film.
Ravi, Ammu’s husband in the film, is a direct testimony of how men who pretend to lead exemplary lives outside the home become the worst when they sneak into the cheripuri house at the doorstep. Naveen Chandra has also managed to accurately document the dual personality of Ravi.
Amazon Prime Video’s first Telugu original film ‘Ammu’ is streaming in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi languages besides Telugu. Produced by Kalyan Subramaniam and Karthikeyan Santhanam under the banner of Stone Bench Films, the film is written and directed by Charukesh Shekhar.
