Mrs Review: A Must Watch!

Mrs succeeds in riling you up for all the right reasons. And without resorting to high-pitched drama, applauds Sukanya Verma.

Few films have boiled my blood like Jeo Baby's The Great Indian Kitchen, which documents the daily drudgery a nameless, newly-married young woman undergoes as patriarchy claims another soul.

Every single day, it's the same routine.

She cooks and serves all the meals, sweeps and mops the floor, washes the utensils and the clothes in a household whose men are only too happy to thrust down their ideas of a domestic goddess and shun any external assistance -- help or home appliances.

What plays out is a portrait of misery in monotony, imagine a reverse Perfect Days, wherein director Wim Wenders discovers poetry in the fixed pattern of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo as he goes about his daily chores and banal schedule across a gentle, meditative rhythm.

The main difference here is autonomy.

He's acting out of free will while she's slaving to fulfil a history of expectations forced down upon her by men conditioned generation after generation to believe they can be the boss of a woman's life.

Given how universal the theme of a woman's subjugation is, Arati Kadav's Hindi adaptation of the modern-day Malayalam classic, written by co-producer Harman Baweja and Anu Singh Choudhary doesn't in any way feel like a repetition but yet another exasperating reminder of the rot running deep.

Mrs, starring Sanya Malhotra at the receiving end of domestic servitude, offers a glossier but impactful retelling of a reality that is depressingly true of a bulk of Indian homes.

The action shifts from a rustic, religious lifestyle of Calicut to the uptight, bone china-loving kothiwalas of Delhi -- where misogyny is anyway an easy fit -- when Richa (Malhotra), a passionate dancer coyly agrees to an arranged marriage with Diwakar (Nishant Dahiya), a soft spoken gynaecologist.

The red flags pop up from the word go when he introduces himself as a doctor of female anatomy and orders pasta for a pizza lover.

But the forces behind benefit of doubt don't make much of it and devour the hustle bustle of big fat Indian weddings and lip-smacking visuals of elegantly prepared mithai and pakwans by female hands.

What's unsettling is how easily the injustices of this social arrangement are camouflaged when carried out through the framework of festivity and tradition.

Cinematographer Pratham Mehta's use of soft lighting and colour palette, combined with Prerna Saigal's astute editing, readily point out at the dichotomy of genteel decorum and silently suffered strain.

Kadav's move into a South-to-North cultural context aims to showcase an entirely new household and its own brand of chauvinism and problematic gender expectations putting a damper on Richa's spirit.

Watching her decline from an eager-to-please bride to a domestic robot slogging away day and night -- save for when it's that time of the month -- even as her own dreams and desires are put on a back burner, find a striking metaphor in the kitchen's plumbing issues.

A character's suggestion to get rid of the decay, 'Leakage ki problem poorani hai. Poori pipeline hi change karni padegi', is a shrewdly phrased wakeup call to start protesting, stop enabling and smash the patriarchy.

From the perennial left hand use outrage to menstruating women taboos, forsaking foreplay for mechanical sex to mother-in-law's way or highway or perfectly healthy men posing as permission-granting pigs wanting everything on a platter, Mrs succeeds in riling you up for all the right reasons. And without resorting to high-pitched drama.

There's no violence or argument, just a casually callous pair of father-son and their cheerfully conveyed demands to enslave her.

Nishant Dahiya believably gets under the skin of the entitled, deceiving charm of the commonplace misogynist but it is Kanwaljeet Singh's courteous Betajis coating his deep-seated sexism that remind you what a smooth devil he can be since Maachis.

Wolfing down cholesterol-rich breakfast yet needing ajwain water to poop, the doctor duo's rituals of hypocrisy go on and on, which is what makes Richa's first and final act of retaliation so satisfying to watch even if you are well-versed with the original.

Nimisha Sajayan in The Great Indian Kitchen is a tough act to follow. You can actually feel her exhaustion day in and out over the course of hard labour and simmering rage.

Sanya Malhotra, always on the top of her game, steers clear of comparisons and gives her own poignant, 'prime number' spin to the portrayal.

A qualified dancer herself, there's palpable joy in the way she surrenders to the magic of melodious beats. The actor brings a certain naivete to her character, the more earnest her attempts, the more heartbreaking its impact.

All the while her goodness is taken for granted and hopes to win hearts goes in vain. Until the unbearable stench of the great Indian kitchen makes her wonder if the burden of a title, advertised by marriage as some kind of blessing, is worth the never-ending grind?

Most Mrs wonder, few Richas realise. More power to her.

Mrs streams on ZEE5.