Vienna Doley

Just watched this nuanced yet very real and touching movie and how beautifully it explored the complexity of a mother-daughter relationship. The mother (Anila) shaped by her own unprocessed experiences and taking control of her daughter’s life as a result, while the daughter (Mira) believes she’s completely different and better than her mother. Anila’s traits make her a character that’s difficult to connect with—she seemed like someone who is regressed, unfulfilled, underappreciated, whose potential for growth was stunted and someone who probably did not have much agency or control in her own life. The turning point for Mira was her last conversation with Sri. How someone who barely knew her mother could so clearly perceive her need for attention and validation and while Mira was undoubtedly aware of this herself, the moment it was articulated by another person, something struck her. It was shame, or perhaps a protective instinct for her mother. Perhaps she realizes she had never sought to understand her mother, only to judge her. Her harshness, she now saw, was a defense against the vulnerability of truly seeing her mother's complexities. She was like a painter standing too close to her canvas, unable to see the full picture of her mother’s struggles until someone stepped in to point it out. Sri's judgment of her mother felt reductive, almost trivializing the intricate reality she had spent years both enduring and failing to understand. That last scene of her oiling her mother’s hair seems so symbolic, a moment of unspoken reconciliation, empathy and regret. A thought-provoking and multilayered experience that will definetely stay with me. Outstanding performance by Preeti Panigrahi