Language – Tamil
This Tamil movie definitely has to be one of the boldest movies that has ever been made in the Indian film industry. The movie has several layers and each layer explains the harsh realities of life which every individual has to face in his life and yet moves ahead in the same way as the rain does not stop from coming down even knowing that there are umbrellas. The movie has touched some very social issues that we have been stigmatized to.
The film has some monumental movie stars like Mammootty and Samuthirakani who have made their screen presence felt along with a stellar performance by Sadhana in the role Pappa.
The movie revolves around a spastic girl named Pappa who has been deserted by her mother who has eloped with someone else. She is now taken care by her father who is ready to do anything within his limits for her happiness. Due to her being spastic , the society has rejected her and so has been her family who wants her to be taken away some place else. So does her father. He takes her away to a distant place , in the lap of nature , away from the din and bustle of human life . He somehow could not manage to strike an emotional connect with her daughter. As he rightly mentions in the movie, while he stayed indoors, she chose to stay outdoors and vice versa just like the sun and the moon who hardly co-existed.
The story has been divided into several sub parts which are named after the nature and its attributes which gets reflected in that part of the story.
They soon had to move out of that place and struggled to manage in the city life. Pappa was staying with her father in a place that was disconnected from the modern world and now that she was back in Chennai , she found it difficult to adjust with the city life. The movie beautifully portrays the struggle of a father to keep her spastic child happy.
Soon the father realizes that her daughter has hit puberty and she has been menstruating. He takes her to a gynecologist who advises him not to treat her daughter as a child rather a growing woman who is at a stage of discovering herself and her sexuality. The father after consulting a doctor from the spastic society decides to shift her daughter to a residential school for the spastic children. During this time he saves a transgender sex worker ( Meera ) from being assaulted. The movie very subtly shows the challenges that they have to go through because their sexual preferences. The father soon realizes that her daughter also had her sexual needs and then he does something that will surely raise a lot of eyebrows, the very thought of which can scar people for life. He decides to be a pimp for her own daughter as he did not want her to miss out on any emotion in her life.
At one point he tries to kill her daughter to relieve her off her pains when she is saved by Meera.The movie ends with the father happily married to Meera and her daughter finally having a mother to take care of her needs.
This movie is definitely years ahead of our times and existing social norms. Thank you Ram, Mammootty and Sadhana for this wonderful movie.
Live and let live ……
A garland of frames 