It’s about a wronged woman and her vendetta, a theme done to death in 70 mm. But what sets ‘22 Female Kottayam’ is its spic-and-span cinematic idiom - brilliantly orchestrated scenes building an impressive crescendo,the mind-blowing visuals and a fitting background score. But beneath the seemingly radical storyline and mint-fresh execution there lies an unscrupulous gender politics subverting and questioning very rectitude of the so-called female-oriented film.
The film is a clear-cut lesson on male chauvinism as the heroine of Ashiq Abu’s revenge thriller ends up as an entity defined by her age and gender just as the title suggests. The film tricks you in a subtle style and keeps you engrossed in gore and alarm until you fail to sense the stark injustice in portraying female characters. You don’t expect the screen women to have a politically correct existence, but almost all the females in the film lack any integrity. The film is about Tessa (Rima Kallingal), a victimised woman, who emerges from her ashes to take revenge.
Tessa is supposed to be a smalltown girl who turns bold and bitter following a ruthless tryst with metro life, but we find her characterisation quite confusing. She is apologetic about her virginal status, but moves in with her man-of-the-moment for an extended fling until she relocates to Canada. She is far from naive, but shows no streak of revolt after she is brutally assaulted first time. Ashiq Abu’s avenging deity has no qualms when it comes to putting her battered body and sexuality on use. She merchandises herself to settle the scores with her violators and you cannot help thinking that even Sidney Sheldon heroines are more reasonable. The fierce intensity she evokes is reduced to a faux as she has her work done the easy way.
The other characters too follow a loathsome pattern - Subaida, Tessa’s cellmate in jail, is presented as a character possessing a certain degree of emotional strength, but her wisecrack that a woman’s body is both her weakness and advantage is the undoing of it all. Tessa’s friend and flat-mate Jincy is an instrument to validate the urban myth that being a concubine is no big deal. Jincy is involved with an older man purely for material comforts and her pals including Tessa find no harm in that. In an attempt to make Tessa’s teenage sister metro-savvy, the script has her mouth a cheesy comment fit for a Las Vegas streetwalker. The script by Abhilash K Nair and Shyam Pushkaran has ample elements that ridicule logic, let alone the countless clichés (a filmography rolling down with the end credits cannot redeem the air of familiarity). While the media is abuzz with the news of the miserable working condition of nurses, the characters in the film live a fairytale life. Tessa’s character keeps on reading surgical texts, so that she can do a complicated surgery single-handedly. Above all, she goes scot-free after the blood is spilled.
But, in spite of its unpardonable dynamics and logical paradoxes, the film is worth a watch for its spectacular craft. Fahad Fazil is simply awesome as the sinister and scheming Cyril while Rima delivers career’s best.
Abu doesn’t completely fail you as the film is engaging enough. Shyju Khaled who cranks the camera has done an excellent job along with Rex Vijayan and Biji Bal, who scored apt and classy music for the film.