Monday 7 February 2011

Khaddama - house maid

2011 by Kamal

There are thousands of women in the Middle east who work as housemaids. They work hard, bearing all the tortures from their owners, only because they have a family to feed back at home. A widowed woman from Kerala arrives into a family in Saudi Arabia as a maid and she tries to escape, unable to bear all the mental and physical torture. Movie is all about how she finally make it out and also about some human beings who plays part roles in her escape.

This could have been a heart touching movie, but falls far short of it. It is not a bad movie either. For many reasons I thought it is only just a watchable movie, with a difference, considering the present state of Malayalam movies. It could have been an incredibly touching movie. The script doesnt offer much challenges to its lead actress to bring out a life time role. But some of the male roles, though short, do get few moments to excell. Casting goes wrong, especially for the two major roles. Kamal should have taken a cue from Tamil cinema and casted out of the box acters for such a movie, which is taken from the life of ordinary people.

May be its because I always thought about Kamal's Perumazhakkaalam as one of the best Malayalam movies of modern times, I am not able to accept anything sub standard from him.