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A woman's film

M D Riti

Ay munde (hey, bitch), I know where you go and what you do," cries the young boy in the climax of the film. "I know the secret of all your fancy clothes and the paint you use on yourself." The expletive, as much as the terrible truth that her young brother has finally discovered, shatters Deviri's poise. And she decides it's time he found a better world for himself than the one she can offer him.

Debutante director Kavitha Lankesh's film Deviri -- an attempt to bring her late father, Lankesh's Kannada novella, Akka, to the screen -- is a fairly powerful venture for a first film. It does not look as if it is likely to do well in the theatres, although its director and producers insist that is their main goal. It is bound to fare well on the film festival and award selection circuits, though. Distributors Ashitha Films will release Deviri in the theatres tomorrow.

Deviri is essentially what the film trade describes as a 'story film.' It depicts a crucial, short phase in a young boy's life, as seen through his eyes. Kyaatha alias Krishna belongs to a typical migrant family living in a slum in Bangalore. His mother brings him and his beautiful elder sister, Deviri, to Bangalore from north Karnataka after the death of their father.

She too dies soon and it falls to Deviri's lot to sustain herself and her brother, to find them a home and a livelihood. This she does by becoming part of a small stable of prostitutes run by a contractor, who in turn enjoys the protection of a local MLA.

Kyaatha and Deviri live in a small, one-room goodalu (hutment) in a Bangalore slum, and Kyaatha believes that Deviri supports him on her income from carrying bricks on a construction site for the contractor. Deviri's erratic hours make it difficult for her to cook regularly for him or bathe him, but she tries her best to make a home for him and to put him through school.

Kyaatha, however, finds it much more interesting to play truant and run wild through the day, taking advantage of Deviri's absences and the numerous times she is forced to send him out of the hut to entertain her two pimp lovers and the occasional client.

But Kyaatha gradually comes to understand what Deviri's real vocation is. And confronts her with it when she tries to exercise some control over his vagrancy. At this point, Deviri, who is herself at a crossroad because of her deteriorating relationship with the touts who run her, decides to make a clean break from Kyaatha and simply disappears from his life and their tiny home.

Kyaatha eventually finds himself in an orphanage, where he finally recognises the value of education, and decides to live on with the hope that he will find his sister some day again.

Certain images from the film, like the recurring scenes of Kyaatha going to bed every night, either lying beside his Akka (elder sister) and hugging her, or cuddling into a used and discarded saree in her absence, continue to remain in one's mind. "She is my mother, my sister, my everything," he says to an unseen mentor at a later stage. "She makes rotis for me, takes care of me, and when she is forced to neglect me, her sorrow turns into anger directed against me."

The film does not have a very strong story line. It weaves together various incidents, cameos and experiences of Kyaatha and tries to string them together into a meaningful overview. The entire story has markedly cynical and sad overtones, typical of Lankesh's tales.

Even the humour is black, as in the sequence when Kyaatha joins a ragtag band of Kannada chauvinists, out on a drive to collect money in the cause of their language. When Kyaatha in a moment of misguided fervour puts a 50 rupee note into their kitty, they take him over as their mascot. "See this konga (Kannada derogatory slang word for Tamilian)," they exhort passersby. "He put in his day's earnings from shining shoes into our fund. If you don't better his contribution, we will simply wreck your car/shop/house."

Actually, Kyaatha is a Kannadiga and the money is Deviri's. And the extortionists turn out to be the same MLA's goons, collecting money for his election expenses.

Excellent casting goes a long way in enhancing the film. Street boy Manja, whom Kavitha picked up from a residential shelter for boys, acts like a natural. Interestingly, Manja's own background is similar in many ways to Kyaatha's. The film unit faced some tense moments when Manja's natural mother, whom he had run away from, died suddenly when they were halfway through the film. This actually happened on the very day rediff.com visited the shooting location at a school in Basavanagudi some months ago. However, Manja recovered from his personal tragedy and was able to complete the film. The unit has placed whatever money they gave him for the movie in fixed deposits in his name.

The dusky actress Nandita Das is just perfect as Deviri. Nobody would guess that she is not a native Kannadiga. Paddi, the other important person in Kyaatha's life, is played by the up-and-coming Bhavana. Actually, we see as much of Paddi as of Deviri: she lives in the same slum and is a prostitute too, but in a slightly different way. Her father pimps her out in the movie industry, in the hope that it will lead her to becoming a big star some day. Paddi brings glamour into Kyaatha's otherwise humdrum life by taking him to watch film shootings and to eat at restaurants.

Both Deviri and Paddi look out for Kyaatha in their own way and he looks up to both of them as his idols. "I cannot distinguish between you two," he cries out in despair, in the throes of a nightmare induced by hunger and fear after Deviri leaves him. "But I would rather starve than eat from what the men who use you give me."

The talented actress B Jayashree and character actor Kashi lend some colour to the film in cameo roles as the drunk Rangappa and his hard-working wife. Excellent camerawork by talented and award-winning veteran S G Ramachandra gives the film a tremendous lift. There are also three songs, all of which have been written by Lankesh and set to music by popular music director V Manohar. Manohar even sings a drunk song himself.

Crisp sound editing sets the tone of the whole film. Kavitha and producer, journalist Bharathi Gowda, are trying to collect other film songs based on Lankesh's lyrics and have them compiled into a single audio cassette album.

However, the characters still emerge as essentially unidimensional. The film remains at the level of a tale well told, and a book converted into moving images. The pace of the film is slow, despite the director's efforts to pep it up. And there is no attempt to round the characters or make them whole in themselves. The film remains more an attempt to depict relationships, than the people involved in them.

Although the protagonist of the film is a small boy, who seems far too naive for his years given his street exposure, the story is really more about the many women who come and go in his life, and the exploitation they all suffer. All of them are also shown as exercising some choice over their life situations, and being reasonably happy with the lives they lead. So in a sense, Deviri could be described as a woman's film. But whether it will really draw theatre audiences remains to be seen.

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