‘Ullozhukku’ movie review: Urvashi’s powerhouse performance carries this haunting drama

Urvashi and Parvathy Thiruvothu’s effective performances make director Christo Tomy’s debut film a gripping drama on secrets, mistakes, and redemption

Everyone in Ullozhukku is stranded, in one way or the other. Even a dead body remains unburied for days, as flood waters have submerged the burial grounds. The less said of the living, the better. Anju (Parvathy Thiruvothu) and her mother-in-law Leelamma (Urvashi) are in a life not of their choosing. One has come to terms with it, tempered by the struggles of family life, and even yearns to protect that way of living, while the other still has some spirit left to fight her way out of it.

They are literally stranded too; at their house on an island in the backwaters, in which the flood waters are rising and the country boat is the only connection to the outside world. At the hands of a writer of lesser sensitivity, this is a situation from which a villain can be unearthed, and fingers pointed at, for both Anju and Leelamma have their grey areas.

The situation at the centre of Ullozhukku is the kind that voyeuristic YouTube channels would jump at, to milk it for views and comments condemning those involved, on both sides. But a little bit of sensitivity and open-mindedness for the other side brought to the table by debutant writer and director Christo Tomy makes all the difference. Even as a judgemental viewer takes one side or the other, Tomy slips in a bit of information to upset such calculations.

Like the scene where Leelamma opens up to Anju about her own younger days as an unwilling bride, with her dreams buried. It would almost seem she had wilfully buried it all and made herself believe in the illusory happiness, until years later she encountered Anju, who is caught in a dilemma of a different nature. This understanding on her part plays a key role in the evolving relationship between the two women, which is marked by bruising secrets that they withhold from each other. Ullozhukku (Undercurrent) is quite an apt title for a film that compassionately dips its feet into the unseen, mysterious mindscapes of its characters.

Initially, Tomy appears to be in a hurry to take us to the middle of this situation, as in a few intelligently edited moments he rushes through Anju’s furtive romance with aimless struggler Rajeev (Arjun Radhakrishnan), her wedding to Thomaskutty (Prasant Murali) and Thomaskutty’s debilitating illness. Then the film takes on the comfortable pace of a wall clock, making us feel the uncertainty and pain that simmers beneath.

No one else conveys these myriad emotions as much as Urvashi who, in a masterclass of controlled acting, with her use of subtle gestures, brings in a devastating effect. At times it would even make us root for her, even when we disagree with her. Parvathy too pulls off an effective performance in her comeback to Malayalam cinema after a while. Prashant gets some scope for performance while Arjun Radhakrishnan, a capable actor, gets a limited one. Shehnad Jalal captures the mood of the film in all its melancholic glory.

The script does take a few convenient turns, especially Leelamma’s turnaround and a character’s illogical demand for land and some uncharacteristically rash lines, to arrive at the pre-ordained climax, but the craft with which the right emotions are evoked at the right time makes one look beyond such niggles. With Ullozhukku, Christo Tomy announces his arrival as a filmmaker to watch out for.