Two Indian entries are making quite a splash at the 74th Berlinale, both from young directors with a singular vision: P S Vinothraj’s ‘Kottukaali’ (The Adamant Girl) featuring Soori Muthuchamy and Anna Ben, and Raam Reddy’s ‘The Fable’, helmed by heavyweight Manoj Bajpayee, along with Deepak Dobriyal and Priyanka Bose.
‘Kottukaali’ is self-taught Vinothraj’s second feature, and makes good on the promise of his 2021 Rotterdam break-out ‘Koozhangal’ (Pebbles), a hardscrabble tale of a father-and-son trekking across a parched landscape in search of a missing element that will make them whole. ‘The Fable’ is also a sophomore feature, which comes after a long gap — Reddy’s ‘Thithi’ premiered in 2016 at the Locarno film festival, and successfully travelled the festival circuit.
Ben plays Meena, the adamant girl who refuses to say yes to a match selected by her family, her heart already given to a lower-caste man. She is instantly deemed a culprit many times over. How dare she, a mere female, behave in this manner? Not only is she disobedient, a terrible quality in a potential wife, but has had the temerity to actually fall in love. Naturally, she has to be possessed, and equally naturally, she has to be exorcised, under the watchful-cum-baleful gaze of Pandi (Muthuchamy), the would-be groom.
The bulk of the film is spent in a ramshackle vehicle, in which the mutinous Meena and her helpless mother, her sniffy to-be sisters-in-law, a young boy, and a rooster are being ferried to the exorcist.
The tale, which beautifully entwines morality and misogyny, is leavened by lashes of humour: the vehicle needs to be kickstarted every-time it sputters to a stop for various reasons — the boy needs to pee, the accompanists on a motorcycle look for local hooch, the sick rooster needs to be revived. And in a lovely touch, a large bull which blocks the way is led away by a chit of a girl, with all the manly men standing petrified by the road-side, before the party can hit the road again.
Vinothraj’s excavation of masculinity is made powerful in the way Pandi comes across — an aggrieved, explosive ball of rage — under siege by not just Ben’s silence, but by her reaching for agency. And in the way he chooses to end the film, the director hints at a shift in the needle : will the adamant girl become pliable, or will the adamant man loosen up? The film leaves us wondering.
Reddy’s ‘The Fable’ is about a clutch of mysterious goings-on in a large, prosperous Himalayan homestead, owned by Dev (Bajpayee), who lives with his wife ( Bose), a teenage daughter, and a younger boy. The ownership clearly goes back generations, and has cast the villagers not exactly as serfs, but as those who are clearly beholden to Dev: their livelihoods depend on being able to work in the orchards.
All seems fine on the surface, but there’s something simmering underneath, which begins as what appears to be an inconsequential fire and then bursts into a raging blaze gobbling up the hillsides.
Who could be behind the fire? Old superstitions – the hills are alive not just with the crackle of the fire, but also dark tales – come up. The estate manager (Dobriyal), who has been there for years, is as concerned as Dev, but by now, the latter seems to have changed, from a rational man to someone brimming with suspicion.
A streak of magical realism shows up in an Icarus-like figure, which swoops above the valley: do his massive wings get singed? ‘The Fable’ throws a tonal switch as it both soars and is grounded by the questions it poses: is flying strictly for birds? What is real? What is not? And ultimately, who are we? Big themes enveloped in a vivid, stunningly shot film.
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