Revisiting KG George's Adaminte Variyellu — A nuanced film on real, flawed women trapped in patriarchy

Adaminte Variyellu was one film that disturbed me vastly when I saw it for the first time on television. And I was in school then, but I couldn't really put my finger on exactly what it was that affected me. Soon after I watched most of KG George’s films and I still couldn't shake that feeling of disquiet. Strangely, I kept going back to them. Years later, in my 30s, I realized why it affected me so much — those women!Perhaps no other filmmaker in Malayalam then or now has created such well-rounded, nuanced female characters on screen. They were so real, flawed, layered, and unapologetic, trapped in powerfully patriarchy, domestic drudgery, battling toxic relationships. There are women who stray, talk about their desires and own up to their faults. They are mothers who refuse to be put on a pedestal. They are women who take charge of their lives and don’t make a big deal out of it. That’s precisely why these celluloid women stay as relevant and impactful even to this day.On Women’s Day here’s looking at one of the most disturbing films directed by KG George, Adaminte Variyellu, a tale of three women and their unfathomably interwoven state of affairs.Alice: The wife of a scheming, manipulative, and chauvinistic businessman Mamachan and a mother of two teenagers. Alice lives in the lap of luxury, yet her life is a living hell. Her marriage has been built on lies, deceit, and apathy, with a husband who pimped her for his business capital. He also sexually exploits the domestic help, a reality which Alice opts to view with disregard and finds solace in the arms of a young architect.Vasanthi: A middle-class woman who is struggling to balance a govt job, home, a nasty mother-in-law, and a wayward husband.Ammini: The domestic help in Mamachan’s household who is helpless to stop him from sexually exploiting her.Set in the early ’80s, Adaminte Variyellu (Adam’s Rib) is a raw and realistic sketch of the struggles of three women from different socio-economic sections of society. They grapple with the traditionally-assigned roles they are expected to essay at various stages of their lives — wife, mother, daughter-in-law, sister, and daughter. KG George paradoxically interlinks their narrative, resulting in an interesting commentary on the role of women in society.Vasanthi (Suhasini) and Alice (Srividya) never meet, yet their life seems oddly interwoven at the core— both are trapped in a patriarchal system that is draining them of their identity, self-worth, and energy. While Alice, who has spent more summers than Vasanthi, finds refuge in the arms of a younger man, the younger woman unable to withstand the pressures of the exploitative marriage, loses her mental balance. She starts hallucinating about her dead father-in-law, who was her biggest support and finds comfort in that memory.Alice pops sleeping pills every night. It can be a habit she picked, along with drinking, when her husband started pimping her, and a defense mechanism when he began his nightly prowls to the maid’s room. Earlier in the film, when Mamachan comes home with two of his business partners, Alice dutifully and unemotionally plays host, even as the two drunk men make passes at her, sneakily inferring how “she has helped in her husband’s business.”[caption id="attachment_10441451" align="alignnone" width="640"]

Stills from Aadaminte Vaariyellu[/caption]Years of desertion and exploitation has turned Alice cold and bitter and the nurturing instincts in her have long been dead. It is a wretched family portrait — a debauched and greedy father, a mother who is consumed in misery and children who feel unloved. When her daughter begins menstruating, it is the maid who helps the weeping child. When in school, she elopes with a boy, it was about seeking validation of love which she never got at home. Even there, Mamachan (Bharath Gopy), typically blames Alice for neglecting their daughter. The sexist patriarch in him would rather make plans for his son as he feels the daughter will eventually get married. “What will she do with all that education? She will marry someone. But you are my future.”Meanwhile, Vasanthi, does every possible domestic duty at home (two decades later Jeo Baby made an entire film on her called The Great Indian Kitchen), without getting a single kind word from anyone. From making food for everyone at home, cleaning, dusting, taking care of her son, dropping, and picking him from school, silently enduring the abusive mother-in-law and unemployed alcoholic husband, doing a day job and coming back home to the same old drudgery, her days are laborious and thankless. Vasanthi is submissive—someone who lets her callous husband wake her up in the middle of her disturbed sleep, just so he can have sex with her. When he tries to force himself on her, she runs away and weeps in a corner. She is a human robot, even at her government office, where she is unable to loosen up with her co-workers. Despite being the sole breadwinner of the house, her worth remains unacknowledged.

Some of the bleakest situations in the movie are dealt with a clinical logic. Like the scene soon after Ammini’s pregnancy is revealed — “In the quest to find pleasure, you didn’t realise such things could occur, did you?” asks a scornful Alice. “You shut up. I will deal with it,” Mamachan tells her. “Where are you planning to dispose of her dead body?” she retorts.

You cannot help but wonder why Alice does not empathise with Ammini. Perhaps she is too immersed in her own despair to sympathise with another woman.In Vasanthi’s storyline, the director leaves clues suggesting her gradual nervous breakdown. The narrative of her downward spiral is brilliant. In one scene, Vasanthi is unable to write a leave letter. On another occasion, she offers her rice batter-coated hands to shake hands with a friend who comes home.Two scenes stand out. The first is the one in which Mamachan warns Alice to be more cautious about her affair as they have two teenage children. Alice looks at him derisively and wonders how he can be sure about her children’s paternity as he has forced her to sleep with his business partners during several occasions. The second is the one in which Mamachan enters the room as Alice breaks up with her lover (Mammootty). You expect fireworks, perhaps remorse on both their faces. Instead, you see Alice putting her sunglasses on slowly and exiting without a backward glance at either man. But in the end that betrayal is what breaks her down. If Srividya subtly brings forth the trauma and neglect she had to withstand in her two-decade-old marriage, Bharath Gopi internalises the casual brutality of Mamachan.Though certain scenes have a crudeness sometimes associated with KG George films (when Alice’s daughter examines her developing feminine physique in the mirror or when she matures into a woman), you cannot discount their impact on screen. Having said that, a few scenes such as those of Alice’s death or Ammini’s delivery could use more finesse.KG George lends a surrealistic touch to the final scene. As Ammini and other women run out of a welfare home, they appear to be running out of the cinematic ‘frame’ — breaking free from the imposing gaze of society. They are seen flouting the directions of the filmmaker, knocking down the camera. And you see him, a representative of the patriarchal society, throw up his hands in despair!What makes Adaminte Variyellu an important film is that while it gives space to three women protagonists, there is no pretence of the world becoming a better place for her. KG George gives you no gratifying conclusions or promises of a better world. Nor is there any superfluous commentary on the empowerment of women. The film simply shows the ugly, warped existence of a woman in a man’s world, a reality that remains disturbingly true to his day.Neelima Menon has worked in the newspaper industry for more than a decade. She runs an exclusive Malayalam movie portal called fullpicture.in. She is known for her detailed and insightful features on misogyny, and the lack of representation of women in Malayalam cinema.Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.