Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey movie review: Domestic abuse satire that seesaws from realism to myth, depth to superficiality

Cast: Darshana Rajendran, Basil Joseph, Aju Varghese, Azees Nedumangad, Sheethal Zackaria, Kudassanad Kanakam, Anand Manmadhan, Sudheer Paravoor, Manju Pillai Director: Vipin Das Language: Malayalam Commercial Malayalam cinema has for decades normalised violent husbands in various ways including by writing them as nice guys and their conduct as comical. It’s easy to do this since the goal of such films has been to pander to misogynists. This is clearly not director-writer Vipin Das and his co-writer Nashid Mohamed Famy’s mission in Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey. The two have adopted comedy as a means to take down abusive men instead. Humour is a tricky vehicle for a grim subject when your aim is not to treat it lightly. For millennia, women have suffered physical assaults and emotional subjugation by husbands and lovers, many have been maimed and/or killed in the bargain. Freedom of expression means that no subject should lawfully be out of bounds, but the question is: could such circumstances ever be used to elicit laughter without being inconsiderate? Well, if Roberto Benigni could carve a comedy out of the tragedy of a concentration camp, it’s a given that sensitivity and a sense of humour are not mutually exclusive. So the answer is: yes, but it’s a challenge. Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey is risky because while lampooning the perpetrators of a crime and their enablers, there’s always the possibility of unwittingly trivialising the crime itself. The film’s overall blend is off balance, but in one key area it remains unfailingly on message: its tone consistently mocks abuse and abusers, never the abused. The eponymous protagonist– Jayabharathi (Darshana Rajendran) – is born to seemingly doting parents who appear to spoil her while being unfairly tough on her brother (played by Anand Manmadhan as a grown-up). The supposed spoiling though never amounts to freedom for her. Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey illustrates the gaslighting that actual women face around everyday occurrences. From childhood to adulthood, Jaya is constantly told that she is loved, respected and free to make choices by the very people close to her who disrespect her, deny her agency, bully her and make all her decisions on her behalf. School is followed by a college of her parents’ choice, a boyfriend (Aju Varghese) without their knowledge and a husband (Basil Joseph) whose home she shares with his mother (Kudassanad Kanakam) and sister (Sheethal Zackaria). In short, Jaya is just another woman on a conventional path in small-town Kerala. (Minor spoilers in this paragraph) The first time she is struck by a man and the first time a second man strikes her both come as shocks, because the men’s actions are sudden. Like her reactions, they’re believable. The next startling episode comes when she finally retaliates – the jolt in this case is different since it is steeped in hyperbole and a deliberate touch of absurdism. These smartly edited scenes are among Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey’s most impactful passages, their effectiveness heightened by the slow, steady rhythm of the narrative leading up to them. (Minor spoilers in this paragraph) I froze when Jaya first fights back (I won’t explain how she does or who is at the receiving end). Then I laughed because of the conscious exaggeration in the overall construction of the scene – the action choreography and acting in particular are designed to remind us that Jaya’s is not routine female behaviour; yet, I confess it was quite cathartic to see this woman hammer a man who has been walloping her for months. Then I laughed at the fellow’s fears for his macho reputation in case it becomes publicly known that he was beaten up by a woman. I had laughed earlier at the unexpected accuracy in the depiction of a fake male feminist – the sort of person who is commonly found off screen writing high-falutin progressive Facebook posts and making lofty statements at women’s rights seminars, only to drop the mask within the confines of his home and workplace. I barely laughed in the rest of the film, though Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey is evidently designed to evoke mirth continuously while eviscerating patriarchy. The stunts are a novelty within such a setting, but the effort to amalgamate comedy, even farce, and this theme mostly did not work for me. I also struggled to connect with a film that refuses to let go of Jayabharathi Wonder Woman once the initial laughter has settled down; a film that is purportedly about a survivor of domestic violence but does not give her the interiority her husband gets. A conversation with a classmate early on and another with her brother in the second half are among the few occasions providing an insight into Jayabharathi’s mind. Another scene that sees her as a person rather than a mere medium through which to send out a message comes late, when she sits weeping at a bus stop. Before, after and in between, we see Jayabharathi through a distant lens or we see not her, but a mythical creature concocted by the filmmaker. She is the person pretty much every woman at various points in her life has wished she had been in response to molestation, verbal harassment and other forms of violation. “Why didn’t I hit him?” … “Why didn’t I say that?” … “Why didn’t I think of that?” … Women often ask themselves these questions. “I could have killed him.” Women might say so, but that they almost never put these words into action is apparently highly unattractive to Indian filmmakers, which is why true-to-life survivors – such as Pallavi in the excellent Uyare – are rare on screen, whereas the rape victim as an avenger with an elaborate plan is a frequented trope. The latter are a fantasy, the only kind of survivors of violence most mainstream filmmakers consider worthy of being heroines. To be fair, unlike most films in this category that present themselves as being authentic, Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey gives its scenes of man-woman combat a farcical air. The farce yields diminishing returns though following that first arresting moment of self-defence. Besides, it’s plain to see that the script is more invested in examining Rajesh’s mind than Jaya’s; in the interests of maintaining its lightness, it also often downplays or ignores the extreme – even potentially fatal – danger women face in violent homes. Malayalam cinema hardly ever condemns intimate partner violence. In a cinematic universe where the casual endorsement of wife beaters and marital rapists is the norm (recent examples: Aadya Rathri,   Ayyappanum Koshiyum …), this film’s unequivocal denunciation is significant. So, I wanted to like it fully, I wanted to feel exhilarated at the sight of Jayabharathi tapping her physical strength, unreal though it is. But after her original confrontation with her attacker and the pleasure of seeing an aggressive man’s cowardice unmasked, I could only think of how the film repeatedly places her in lethal situations without acknowledging their lethality. (Spoilers in this paragraph) Rajesh’s nosy relative (Azees Nedumangad) comes up with a plan to ‘tame’ Jaya: woo her and impregnate her, he says. His scheme deconstructs the “babies keep a couple together” advice that society doles out to unhappily married folk. The ugly truth left unspoken by conservatives is that women, especially those without an income, are socially and economically tied down when they become mothers. Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey must be commended for saying it like it is here, even as it must be noted that it looks past the vileness of men who rape their wives to get them pregnant. No doubt it will be argued that Rajesh opts to romance Jaya instead of rape her because he is a small-sized man – as we are obliquely reminded around this time – and he is intimidated by her at this stage. This argument overlooks the vulnerability of a woman forced to share a bed with a violent partner. When we sleep, we must trust that we are in the company of those who will not take advantage of our stupor to subdue us. This has either not occurred to the writers of Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey, or it’s just too complicated to bring up such a grave, unsavoury matter and offset it against the film’s comedic aspirations. What we get, therefore, is an unruffled Jaya and a by turns affectionate and cowering Rajesh within those walls. The tenor of these scenes suggests that they are meant to be amusing, even empowering, yet for a woman with an abusive spouse, the bedroom is a terrifying space, a place where even well-wishers avoid intervening. Nothing bothered me more about Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey than Super Jaya’s super coolth while in bed with Rajesh. Those sections exacerbated my disconnect with the film; they in themselves felt disconnected from Jaya. What was she thinking there? Was she thinking at all? (Spoilers in this paragraph) In one scene, Jaya asks Rajesh to do up her eyes with a kajal pencil. Again, I realise this is meant to indicate her coolth and how much at sea he is around her, but…seriously?! She’s serving herself on a platter to her batterer after handing him a weapon. And this is clever? Really? I, for my part, was terrified for her in those minutes. This is not the only arena in which Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey sidesteps complexities or seems oblivious to them. (Spoilers ahead) Elsewhere, an accident conveniently pre-empts a discussion on abortion. In another, when Jaya is told that she is making too great a fuss about what was only one slap after all, her counter is to count out the number of times she has been hit by Rajesh – she’s being factual, but the fact that one slap is one too many is never made. The result of the mismatch between Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey’s intentions and its understanding of domestic violence is that the film is not as good as the sum of its best, most intelligent parts. Those best parts of course are remarkable. My pick of them are the man faking feminism to gain intellectual credibility, the husband prioritising his bruised ego over even his bruised body in pain, the insistence of illiberal parents that they are liberal, Ankit Menon’s music that is among the year’s finest from Indian cinema, and Darshana Rajendran. In a cast filled with shining talents, Sudheer Paravoor’s flawless timing creates one of the most infuriating interfering relatives ever seen on the Indian screen. Aju Varghese once again after Helen reminds us that he is capable of far more than the fluffy comedy that dominates his filmography. And Basil, who brought his A-game to this year’s Dear Friend and Palthu Janwar , occasionally borders on over-statement while playing scared, but is solid while portraying Rajesh’s obnoxiousness. The women, while all convincing in their reactions, are not written with an organic progression towards their big moments. Despite this, Kudassanad Kanakam’s formidable screen presence makes her unmissable. And Darshana chews up every scene in which the writing gives Jaya an inner presence. She is also undoubtedly congenitally attuned to action. Notwithstanding the limitations in the characterisation, it is good to see this bright young artiste getting two films in the same year featuring fantastic songs named after her character, this one in a film that itself is named after her character (the other being Hridayam in which she played a woman called Darshana). For a true showcase of the depth of her acting skills though, watch Dear Friend . Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey gets its name from a scene spotlighting Rajesh’s awkwardness around his wife and the gentler side of life. The use of a phrase from the national anthem here is a stroke of genius, directing attention as it does to Indian society’s reverence towards women in the form of mother, goddess and motherland – amma, devi and mathrubhumi – the pedestal being her prison, strategically set up by patriarchy to camouflage its determination to keep ordinary women in check. But the title, that scene and the titular song also betray the true nature of this film since they draw on Rajesh’s flaws and actions while seeming to be about Jaya: this, in essence, is a man-centric film positioned as a film about a woman. Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey is important but uneven. It is deeply satisfying in the few instances when it gets to the heart of its woman protagonist. She, ironically though, is the most under-explored character in the script. This glaring weakness in the film tells us as much about the male-dominant Malayalam industry and the society in which it is located as the overt pro-women messaging of the film itself. Rating: 2.75 (out of 5 stars) 

This review was first published in November 2022 when Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey was in theatres. The film is now streaming on Disney+Hotstar.

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .