'Paradha' Movie Review: An Important, Mostly Spunky Social Drama

In a quiet moment in Praveen Kandregula’s Paradha, Amishta (Darshana Rajendran), Subbu (Anupama Parameswaran), and Ratna (Sangitha) — women of different ages, armoured with various coping mechanisms they’ve developed to combat biases — take a breathless second to drink in the beauty of the Himalayan mountains in front of them. Ratna, in her naiveté, asks Amishta how far the mountain ranges are from them. “I’m just going to walk to them,” she says, deceived by the atmospheric mirage. But Amishta, who holds much more knowledge about the world than her, doesn’t laugh this off. “It only looks close,” she says, stopping short with a knowing smile.

In moments like these, the Telugu drama feels like a delicate unicorn. To have a film revolving around three women navigating patriarchy, not just in the buddy genre space, but also the mainstream landscape, feels powerful. And when Paradha goes a step ahead and shows us women in their habitat, and especially raising each other in quiet moments of leisure, Paradha feels exquisite. But the Telugu film isn’t solely a road film where women find themselves in ways men have been allowed in cinema. Reflecting the lived realities of women, Paradha explores a misogynistic custom in a fictional village. The leisure can wait.

Darshana Rajendran, Sangitha, and Anupama Parameswaran in 'Paradha'

Subbu belongs to Padathi, a village that worships Jwalamma. But what differentiates this village from the many others that deify goddesses is Jwalamma’s story. The local goddess was a terrific warrior in her time, who could take on men at war. You can trust humankind to arm-twist any woman’s story to their convenience. Perhaps to bring the women in their town down a peg, Jwalamma’s end brings about an impediment for her tribe. Talks of a curse make the rounds, and suddenly, covering up a woman’s face seems to be the only solution, and Jwalamma’s courageous legacy is forgotten. 

Subbu’s world is quite small. Her orbit is dotted by her father, her childhood sweetheart (Rag Mayur) and Padathi. She doesn’t mind the paradha too much because her mother’s advice keeps ringing in her ears: “The paradha will protect you.” These words have kept her going through her mother’s death and her father’s slight indifference to these injustices. Anupama conveys Subbu’s angst with subtlety in Paradha, often having to contain the spark in her eyes, just like Subbu. But beyond these physical markers, the film doesn’t dig deep into the emotional ones. Subbu is a placeholder for all the women in the village and their trauma. And her backstory — involving the sacrifice of another woman — is emotionally rich. But this emotion doesn’t get translated to the screen. The magnanimity of her sudden trek from a Telugu village to Dharamsala doesn’t get the narrative importance it needs. 

Anupama Parameswaran in 'Paradha'

Subbu’s relationship with Amishta and Ratna is one of the best scenes in the film, as they gradually thaw the ice between them. Women raising each other is possibly the one thing we don’t often see organically in the mainstream cinema context, and Paradha gives us fleeting glimpses of the rare camaraderie. We’re so glad Amishta, the snarky know-it-all, isn’t just a one-dimensional grump. She, like the other women, learns the different circumstances that their sex has to deal with without judgment. 

Gopi Sundar’s music takes up a light, natural space in Paradha, especially in scenes of movement and discovery. The film does get a little heavy-handed towards the end — something that’s maybe inevitable when a social drama is stirred together with a buddy film. This is when we’re reminded of Amishta’s words. Greatness seems like it is at arm’s length; but it only looks close.