Aami

Aami Story: The film mainly deals with two relationships the writer had - with the husband and after his demise, with a suitor from a different religion.

Aami Review: Is love an emotion that develops in a person during the teenage years and dies a natural death with marriage? Is it something one should feel only towards one individual from the opposite sex? Is it something that is restricted by age, religion or other societal norms? Or is it like a river that flows from birth to death, looking for a sea to reach the zenith of fulfilment?

Kamal explores this bravely during these times of tumult by narrating the breathtaking and often breathless life of Kamala Das through his movie, Aami. More than once, the filmmaker makes his protagonist assert that what she wrote in My Story as well as her other literary works were her life experiences enhanced with imagination. The same is naturally true of this cinematic tribute, which, however, strives to stay true to all the important events of her mercurial life. The filmmaker’s intervention seems to be mainly through the character played by Tovino – her muse Lord Krishna who is also her conscience.

Though the director goes back and forth in time while depicting this exhilarating tale of a contemporary and complex character, the narrative is largely simple and straight forward. He begins his tale by tracing Madhavikutty’s literary lineage and recreating a bygone era. The story shifts to Kolkata and Mumbai as she grews up. Malavika competently plays the 15-year-old bride who marries Madhava Das who is 20 years older while the childhood is brought alive brilliantly by a child actor. Manju Warrier takes over after the couple’s first child is born.

If the first half is all about the love-hate relationship between Kamala and Das, made famous by the poet herself through her tell-all autobiography, the second deals with her controversial relationship with a Muslim gentleman, played by Anoop Menon. Starved of love in childhood, thanks to an undemonstrative mother, and put off by the raw masculinity of the husband for long, the floodgates of romance are thrown open, faced with the adoration showed upon her by this admirer. For his sake, she converts to Islam.

This episode of her life, though well-known and spoken about in hush-hush tones, was never really documented for posterity, except perhaps being mentioned in passing by some writers and journalists. It is this bold task that Kamal undertakes, knowing full well that it is fraught with risk. He changes the name of her suitor but goes the whole hog by showing that it wasn’t merely at the platonic level.

He also shows how the talented poet was caught between communal forces and made to do things that didn’t agree with her heart. There perhaps lies the message of the filmmaker who himself has been at the receiving end of such extremists.

Manju pulls off another competent act and rises to the occasion by emoting well the various moods of the love queen of Malabar. But the fans and acquaintances of the poet may not be entirely convinced about the overt makeup, the predominant Valluvanadan slang and the throaty laughter that punctuates her dialogues.