‘Mrs.’ review: Arati Kadav's drama sticks close to Malayalam original

Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen was intended for theatrical release in 2021, but likely benefitted from the covid restrictions that resulted in a digital-only release. With everyone stuck inside, it was the right time for a film about the value of domestic work. It was one of the most acclaimed films that year, and it seemed only natural to hear some months later  that the Malayalam film would be remade in Hindi. What was surprising to me, though, was the director attached to the project. 

Arati Kadav has directed one feature (Cargo, 2019) and a handful of shorts. A slim filmography, and yet she’s one of the most distinctive voices working in Hindi cinema today. Her work till now has tended towards science-fiction with a warm, handmade quality. A remake never seemed like the right use of her capacity for whimsy and invention, though I was curious to see what direction she might take Jeo Baby's film. Having watched Mrs., I’m hoping this is Kadav’s ‘one for them’. 

The film begins with two deft montages. The first introduces us to dancer Richa (Sanya Malhotra); the second, more measured, shows her brief courtship and subsequent wedding to doctor Diwakar (Nishant Dahiya). It's an arranged marriage, which Richa enters into happily. From the moment she steps into his home, where his mother and father also live, there are alarm bells. Her mother-in-law (Aparna Ghoshal) refuses help on her first day there, but gives a meaningful stare when, the next morning, Richa scoops up fresh butter she’s churned with a finger and tastes it. This clearly isn’t a household run on casual joys.

Richa soon realises how regimented a home she's married into. The women do all the cooking and cleaning; the men have 'real jobs' (or had, in the case of Richa's taciturn father-in-law, played by Kanwaljit Singh). There are rules for everything: which hand to serve food with; using a pestle instead of a mixer to grind things; ajwain-water at a certain hour, tea at another. Pretty soon her day looks like a nightmare version of Taapsee Pannu’s in Thappad (2020), which would pair nicely with this film in a creeping patriarchy double bill. She wakes at 5, makes breakfast, packs her husband’s lunch, waits on her father-in-law the whole day, steals a few minutes to sadly look at her old dance videos, serves dinner, cleans the kitchen (“you don’t leave it stale overnight”), and ends with joyless sex with her husband. “Kitchen is the solution to every problem,” Diwakar, the gynaecologist with no understanding of women, tells Richa on their wedding night. For her, it’s the problem with no solution. 

It's no exaggeration to say, if you’ve seen The Great Indian Kitchen, you’ve seen Mrs. Nimisha Sajayan’s baleful stares in the Malayalam film signals a growing storm more than Malhotra’s hurt glances, but their trials are virtually the same. Both characters are told to give up their dreams of dancing. They have the same outburst regarding foreplay during sex, and are met with the same hurtful response. In both films, a leaky drainpipe becomes a ticking bomb. 

What of those who haven’t seen The Great Indian Kitchen? I imagine they’ll find Mrs. a well-argued polemic on the invisible labour of Indian women in the household. Kadav is a deft director, with a good eye and sense of rhythm (the editor is Prerna Saigal). Malhotra skillfully telegraphs all the little hurts Richa endures on a daily basis. That said, it’s disappointing how little the remake adds to the original. There’s no attempt to find an equivalent for the scene in The Great Indian Kitchen where the family watches a TV debate about women being allowed into Sabarimala temple—domestic concerns tied to wider political discourse. In Mrs., as in Baby’s film, a temporary domestic worker is brought in when Richa is on her period and not allowed to enter the kitchen. She casually tells Richa that the household has a reputation for casteism and finickiness. The film goes no further, but there’s at least an effort to point out that the relief we feel in Richa getting a few days’ rest is made possible through another kind of undervalued labour. 

Both Baby’s and Kadav’s films are well-observed, concise, cutting. Yet, they’re so focused on their central argument that they end up playing a small cluster of notes throughout. I can’t think of a single scene in Mrs. from the time Richa enters her new home that has a purpose other than illustrating awful patriarchal behaviour. The thinness of the other characters is evident when placed against Richa. Perhaps this is why, as much as I admire The Great Indian Kitchen, I never felt the desire to return to it. Then again, maybe I just don’t like being reminded that I’ve been a beneficiary of the system it’s skewering.