Ullozhukku

he first few events in Ullozhukku (Under Current), directed by Christo Tomy, happen in quick succession. Life falls through Anju’s (Parvathy) fingers before she can chart a plan. From a wide-eyed sales girl at a textile shop furtively smiling at her lover, she transforms into a bride posing for awkward post-wedding pictures on a backwater boat, her eyes heavy from what was likely a teary night. The film then moves to the old, spacious house of her husband, Thomas Kutty (Prasanth Murali), and his doting mother, Leelamma (Urvashi), in Kuttanad, where time, like a boat engine whirring to a halt at the dock, comes to a pressing stillness.

Everyone in Ullozhukku is stranded, in one way or the other. Even a dead body remains unburied for days, as flood waters have submerged the burial grounds. The less said of the living, the better. Anju (Parvathy Thiruvothu) and her mother-in-law Leelamma (Urvashi) are in a life not of their choosing. One has come to terms with it, tempered by the struggles of family life, and even yearns to protect that way of living, while the other still has some spirit left to fight her way out of it.