Madhupal’s movie gives dignity to sex work by not sensationalising it

The stigma attached to the profession of a sex worker is so strong that often, even actresses shy away from portraying such roles on screen or on stage.
Actress Padmapriya, who has daringly played such a role in Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Naalu Pennungal in 2007, has taken up a similar character yet again in director Madhupal’s vignette Oru Raathriyude Kooli, which is part of the anthology Crossroad.
What appealed to her about the film, Padmapriya says, was that the director has presented the character in an unconventional manner.
“The film treats the profession as normal, as someone going to office on a regular day. It does not sensationalise prostitution one bit. It gave dignity to their profession,” she says. “To me, this is one of the most unobtrusive sex worker characters I have come across. The only other time I have played a similar role before is in Adoor’s film, in which my character Kunjipennu was a street sex worker. That was still a little dramatic to me, not in the sense of its portrayal, but in her body language. However, in this movie, it’s so subtle that at times even I had to ask if she was really a sex worker? The movie makes it amply clear that this is just the work she does and outside of that, she is an individual with her own emotions and sensitivities,” says Padmapriya.
In the film, her character ends up in the business due to her repressed family background. “She always wanted to be a mother, but never could. Her childlessness strongly affects her and that is shown through a one-night incident in the movie. It’s a film that can take the audience through profound statements questioning their value systems,” she says.
Padmapriya recalls how she shot for the film in the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple street of Trivandrum. “I actually saw these women, and you will not think they are sex workers. They come across as, probably, flower sellers or just regular women,” she says.
The sooner you recognise sex work as a formal industry, the more sense it would make, explains the actress. “It reduces sexual crimes. Right now, the way it functions, these women do not have any rights,” she points out.
A lot of the portions involved her shooting in the guerrilla format, and Padmapriya got to walk freely in the street, as a result! “I have been used to this format of filming right from my movie Thavamai Thavamirundhu, which was in Tamil with Cheran. We shot in many areas of Chennai, where you couldn’t take permission to shoot and the same kind of fun was part of this movie too.”