Sexy Durga aka S Durga

Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s Sexy Durga aka S Durga can be called as a director’s movie as it has an upper hand in terms of the sheer making aspect. Sanal shares the opinion that cinema needn’t be a message driven thing and this movie also has no such on your face kind of preaching to its credit. Much like his last outing Ozhivu Divasathe Kali, the director is trying to set the camera in the middle of the moral policing, self centered society and he has managed to present the horror of that situation.

Durga and Kabeer are two individuals who are running away from someone (most probably to live together in some other place). Kabeer is a Malayali and Durga is a North Indian. They want to reach the railway station and the vehicle they got wasn’t really a comfortable one; because of the attitude of the people in that vehicle. The film shows us that miserable journey of Durga and Kabeer to the railway station.

If you are an aspiring film maker who wants to create an impressive movie within the constraints of low budget movie making, then I would say Sexy Durga has that potential to push you to go for that. Sanal Kumar Sasidharan uses his obsession for long single takes to make the experience absorbing and intense. The camera pans away from the interiors of the car to the scary and lonely darkness of the road and when you look at it from a technical aspect, it is really a well planned execution. The movie manages to utilize its technical limitations to achieve an output that looks impressive.

Director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan is playing with a tricky concept here by comparing two Durgas in similar situations. In one narrative we are seeing the Goddess being worshipped by her followers and in a parallel narrative Sanal shows us a similar situation where a bunch of men are harassing another Durga, but throughout the journey they act and talk like they have respect for her while they do nothing to make her feel comfortable. That comparison of the two narratives is apparently the less vocal yet loud statement of the film. While the controversy around the film started, the question raised by a lot of people was why they have used the name Durga? I find nothing wrong in the usage of that name. But it is the adjective Sexy that sounds a bit too sensationalized. Even without it, the film does have an impact. Prathap Joseph has done a terrific job in fulfilling Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s vision and the photography is one of the main highlights of this movie.

The actors here have very limited space to convince us about the trauma or the pleasure of harassment through their facial expressions as the setting here is so dark. The movie has no script and for that matter whatever we see are all the improvisation made by the actors and I must say that they have managed to add genuine looking conversations into the story. Rajashri Deshpande and Kannan Nair respectively plays the roles of Durga and Kabeer while actors like Vedh, Sujeesh, Arun Sol and Bilas Nair depict the roles of the strangers in the car.

Sexy Durga aka S Durga from Sanal Kumar Sasidharan isn’t that over sophisticated as Oraalppokkam (his first film) and it isn’t that hard hitting as Ozhivudivasathe Kali (his second film). Barring the adjective in the title, most of the things here are in place.

Rating: 3.5/5