Janaki V vs State of Kerala

Five minutes into Pravin Narayanan’s controversial Janaki V Vs State Of Kerala and there’s no escaping the strong feeling of déjà vu the film wants you to experience. It begins with the shot of a bishop entering the office of a hot-shot lawyer named David Abel Donovan (Suresh Gopi) and you’re thinking of a character from Lelam. A scene later, we’re drawn into a protest sequence and the sight of an old man getting crushed by the mob and immediately, Kuthiravattom Pappu from The King comes to mind. The sequence and the phone call that sets off the mob is something we’ve seen in several films before, but The Commissioner comes close, and strangely, the film’s ending gets you to recall The Truth. All of these films belong in the ’90s and so does most of Janaki V Vs State Of Kerala. But it’s not just the dated making and clunky dialogues that give you the feeling of watching a 30-year-old movie. It’s almost by design that the film wants to take you back to a time when Suresh Gopi was a legit superstar (the movie begins with a title card stating the same). Just like how the makers of Gopi’s Kaaval tried to milk the ’90s nostalgia by even setting the film in that particular period, Janaki V Vs State Of Kerala too wants you to dig deep and go back to a phase when a bombastic dialogue delivered in affected English was enough to deliver the big goosebumps moment.

Abel Donovan (Suresh Gopi) asks the victim of a brutal sexual assault, Janaki V (Anupama Parameswaran), “Do you watch porn?" Almost everyone in the court and in the theatre is supposed to be shocked by that question, which seems to be the point of it. The idea here is to invoke a similar dramatic intrigue as in a scene from Pink, where Deepak Sehgal (Amitabh Bachchan) asks Minal Arora, “Are you a virgin?" The question in Pink is justified, as Deepak intends to bring about the irrelevance of it in the context of consent. However, here the scene is exactly for all the wrong reasons. Debutant director Pravin Narayanath, who has also written the film, has intended to create an enigmatic protagonist and a sense of shock value by having a protagonist saving the wrong person in Janaki V Vs State Of Kerala. To put it more precisely, David Abel Donovan is the Devil’s advocate, literally! While it sounds like a brilliant idea, the film fails to bring it to fruition.

Nothing enlivens courtroom dramas than fiery arguments, which open new pathways into our understanding of a case. In Janaki V Vs State of Kerala, celebrated advocate David Abel Donovan (Suresh Gopi)‘s arguments are full of fire. Still, a significant portion of them are so irrelevant that they would fit more in a loud television debate than in a courtroom. He is the kind of person who would talk about cheese when he is supposed to argue about chalk. So, it is no wonder that he would go on a long diatribe against the State’s developmental projects when he is arguing in court in a case related to sexual assault, or that he would ask a rape victim whether she watches porn and how often. The opening credit sequences of the film hint at this behaviour with news clippings of his various press statements on a host of issues, all of which reveal a lawyer who is more active outside the court than inside. Janaki V Vs State of Kerala, which arrives in theatres with an extra ‘V’ thanks to the diktats of the censors, is caught between the need to tell a sensitive story and projecting the superhero aura of the actor playing the advocate. Debutant director Praveen Narayanan, who has also written the film, struggles on both counts.