This hard-hitting, if somewhat ambivalent, legal drama comes to us in a wave of controversies. The censor board objected to the pregnant rape survivor being named after a mythological figure. By that logic, bad things happen only to women who are not named after gods and goddesses.
Luckily Janaki Versus State Of Kerala (JSK) comes to us in one piece, untattered, unsullied. It is a film every Indian with a conscience should watch. Not that its pitch at conscientiousness is anywhere close to Sadhana or Arth.
First-time writer-director Pravin Narayanan leans heavily into an intolerant, male-dominated society where a young girl on a scootie, who talks back to eve-teasers and who “dares” to return to a bakery where she has already had an altercation, would automatically be labelled a “loose” character.
Nobody says it aloud. But the unspoken rebuke—she was looking for it—follows the rape survivor to the courtroom, and beyond.
This is a brave, if somewhat hazy, mirror image of what kind of hostility women face outside their homes, and why only outside? Even in their homes. Orphaned Janaki (played with a quiet dignity and poignancy by Anupama Parameswaran) finds a support system in her friends and a boyfriend Naveen (Madhav Suresh) and his pragmatic sister Fatima (Divya Pillai).
In spite of the support, Pravin Narayanan’s storytelling stresses on Janaki’s isolation and the battle that she wages with a society that insists she must keep the baby, as every foetus has the right to live.
What I found unnecessarily provocative is the digs at religious institutions for their support of obsolete ideologies protecting their own interests.
There is a redundant episode at the outset where the hero lawyer David Donovan (Suresh Gopi) excoriates a bishop for trying to protect a priest for raping a nun. This, I felt, was a subject for another film. It dilutes the impact of Janaki’s battle to claim the right to her own body and mind.
Too many twists and turns take away from Janaki’s fight for justice. But some characters, like the guilt-ridden cop Firoz (Askar Ali), unintentionally responsible for Janaki’s father’s death, instil an impetus to the drama.
The impact of Janaki’s struggle remains undiminished by the digressions. The fearful fact that she is being judged for being raped, and not the perpetrator, haunts the film.
Admirably, Suresh Gopi takes the backseat in the courtroom when the need arises. He plays the intrepid lawyer with a dollop of dignity. Even when defending the rape accused, David asks Janaki, “Do you watch porn?” not to unsettle her, but to remind us how we tend to judge an individual by his or her choices.
Watching State Of Kerala Versus Janaki is certainly a good way to again start believing in the cinema of social reform.
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