'What will people say?’ — a question many of us have grown up hearing. For Varahi Mallipamula, it became the starting point for a film. IMPURE, released on October 2, takes that familiar anxiety around judgement and pushes it to an extreme, following a woman who becomes a viral meme and is labelled ‘India’s slut’. Told through comedy and drama, the film looks at purity, social expectations and the ways patriarchy affects both women and men.
She begins in an exclusive chat with CE, “The inspiration behind the movie comes from a particular incident that happened to me in India. Despite the fact that I was hanging around with a ‘progressive’ group of people, there was still judgement on who I was talking to and how I was carrying myself. No matter how old I got, I could never escape ‘what will people say?’ The film follows Sandhya after she becomes ‘India’s slut’, which was a play on India’s daughter.”
Varahi takes on several roles with the film — writer, actor, producer, comedian, creative director and executive producer, while working alongside her mother, Sridevi Mallipamula, who co-produces it. An English-language film with a few Telugu dialogues, IMPURE brings together an entirely Indian cast and crew, with Yashna Muthuluri, Varahi and Sai Krishna in the lead, and Nishanthi Evani directing.
Her understanding of the film’s themes is also rooted in her mother. “My mother has single-handedly raised my sister and me since my father passed away when I was 4. So I constantly saw a strong woman who was both a breadwinner and a nurturer at home. I never questioned myself because I saw a mother who constantly did everything despite the cards she was dealt.”
That experience informs her belief that the story should not be viewed only through a gendered lens. “Women constantly support men-centric stories, and men should be supporting women as well. You might call IMPURE a woman-centric story, but it’s really just a human story,” she notes.
Even the casting of Yashna Muthuluri, began with an image Varahi had carried while writing the first draft. “I always imagined a protagonist who has the kind of innocent face that people would want to protect. When we met Yashna Muthuluri, I knew it had to be her. My director, Nishanthi Evani, wasn’t originally on board, but I pushed for Yashna because she has that innocent look that makes you want to protect her,” highlights the debutant.
While IMPURE tackles difficult subjects, Varahi chose comedy as its vehicle. For her, humour allows conversations to reach people without dictating what they should think.
Quoting William Shakespeare, she says, “Comedy comes from tragedy. Comedy makes serious issues approachable without making them preachy. No one wants to hear a writer lecture an audience through characters or be told what’s right and what’s wrong. An audience would want to use their own intelligence to come to conclusions themselves. If I took a serious drama route, I would’ve been labeled yet another angry feminist, which would make me lose all credibility. And it would limit my reach.”
The film also looks at how patriarchy shapes expectations of men, particularly the idea that their worth is tied to money. “I ultimately believe men are not the enemy. Good and bad have nothing to do with gender. Too many movies focus on the issues women face under patriarchy and forget that men, too, can be victims.We need men fighting alongside women. I’m hoping men will see themselves through our struggling actor character, played by Sai Krishna, and acknowledge how patriarchy is negatively impacting them too,” she says.
As an Indian American filmmaker, Varahi was also conscious of representation. “In America, as soon as I say I’m South Indian, people assume I’m Tamil. It was important for me to have Telugu in the movie because I wanted to represent Telugu as a language and as an emotion,” she shares.
That comes through in OMG, the film’s Tenglish song featuring Raja Kumari, who makes her debut as a music director, co-composing with Karan Pandav. Varahi credits Raja Kumari’s singing and Kadali Sathyanarayana’s lyrics for making it ‘an absolute party banger’.
“It portrays Telugu in a fun, pop and hip-hop manner. The Tenglish song is really about telling the audience to stop calling her too much and step up to her level,” she says.
Balancing multiple roles while playing Veera brought its own challenges. “It was definitely a challenge. I would say between producing, writing and acting, producing is the hardest job. Producing as a job never truly ends; as long as the movie is on its journey, the producer is on hers too. Working with my mother is both a blessing and a curse. While I’m grateful for all her support, no one can push my buttons more than her. Switching between on and off camera was a challenge. Sometimes, even when I’m in the scene playing my character Veera, my crew needs me to snap out and be Varahi,” she expresses.
Yet acting also brought her back to an original dream. “I had a blast playing Veera because she’s bold and a little outrageous. As a comedian, playing the cheeky comedic cousin was just a blast to portray on camera. However, because of my accent and American stereotypes, no one was genuinely taking me, or for that matter even Nishanthi, seriously in our roles. They never see the thousands of hours of prior training and the day-to-day work to push a complete independent movie forward without a distributor backing,” she concludes.