A SPECTACULAR MISFIRE

'Param Sundari' is a psychedelic Kerala postcard, masquerading as a love story

- By Manjusha Radhakrishnan Entertainment Editor

here’s something called the male gaze, but after watching Janhvi Kapoor and Sidharth Malhotra’s romantic comedy, Param Sundari, I'm convinced there's also something called the North Indian gaze when it comes to Kerala. Honestly, you could call it the Punjabifica-tion of South Indian culture and folklore. Everything is turned up to neon brightness — North Indians are fairer, extras from the South are darker, shabbier, and farcical. And yes, there’s even a token Kathakali-masked extra. The clichés are painful.

The film centres on Thekkepattu Sundari Damodaram Pillai (Janhvi), but what we get is pure Bollywood fantasy: jasmine flowers tucked into her hair, sexy saris, plunging blouses, and Moh-iniyattam moves galore.

Janhvi has already faced online trolling, but after this, your rage may quadruple. Her Malayalam is so massacred, so garbled, it sounds like an alien dialect. As a Malayali, every fibre of my being screamed in protest.

OBJECTIFICATION