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Fiction                                                

The Woman Next Door

Yewande Omotoso

Published: 2016

Publisher: Vintage

Language: English

Pages: 279, Paperback

In an affluent neighborhood in Cape Town, South Africa, two strong-willed, successful women live next door to each other. Widows and in their 80s, the two come from completely different backgrounds and are sworn enemies, with each trying to make life a little difficult for the other.

But fate brings them together one day—albeit unwillingly—and has both living under the same roof.

The premise of Yewande Omotoso’s novel is simple. But the author has effectively managed to bring to focus how the repercussions of apartheid were widespread and deeply felt by families across the continent for years even after the White minority rule came to an end. The impacts of racial discrimination—mainly based on skin color and facial features that existed from 1948 till the early-1990s—in modern life is what Omotoso explores through her two main characters.

Marion Agostino is a white native of Cape Town. Once the primary architect in her own firm she had to stop working when she had children and now her children mostly ignore her. Hortensia James is a famous black textile designer whose husband, Peter, is on his deathbed, and they have no children. After her husband’s death she finds out he has a daughter from another woman. Hortensia has been Marion’s neighbor for the past 20 years, living in the very house that Marion meticulously designed and wanted to possess herself.

The chapters alternate between Marion and Hortensia and we get to know their backstories and slowly understand how they became the women they are now—bitter and loveless. But there are many more layers to these women and that’s what keeps the story interesting. Also, it’s not that the women chose to go on a journey of discovery and self-healing but circumstances are such that it’s what they both eventually end up doing.

Omotoso was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria before moving to South Africa with her family in 1992. Her first novel ‘Bom Boy’, published in 2011, got critical praise and many literary awards. In ‘The Woman Next Door’ Omotoso shows how prejudice can fuel hatred among people as well as the ramifications it leaves in its wake. But the witty story is more than just a tale of black versus white for it stunningly depicts the wisdom that comes with age and thus has an underlying charm that you just can’t resist.

What will a housewife do when the lover she’s having sex with suddenly dies in bed—at her home? How will a teenage boy react when he finds out in front of a group of friends that his mother is starring in a local porn film? How will a 7-year-old boy eagerly awaiting his father’s arrival (and whom he has never seen) respond when his father appears in front of the family as a transgender woman? How can a group of teens replace a television they broke by accident, to save their friend from his strict father’s wrath?

The answers to these stimulating questions are linked in the Tamil-language thriller “Super Deluxe”—co-written, co-produced and directed by Thiagarajan Kumararaja. With multiple stars woven together in a compelling storyline covering four different narratives, Super Deluxe is harsh, revolting, and thought provoking. “I should have just jerked off that night,” a father says to his teenage son in this film that subtly challenges social and religious norms with its harsh and brutally honest approach.

For a South Indian cinema, Super Deluxe feels like its made in a parallel universe with a cast born to play their respective roles. But in fact it takes its cast from mainstream South Indian cinema known for its hyper-exaggerated dramatics and throat-choking masala. Samantha Akkineni breaks her stereotypical good-girl image to play the cheating housewife Vaembu, opposite Fahadh Faasil as her husband Mugil. For someone who has sincerely followed South Indian films, it comes as a great surprise that Samantha agrees to play an impulsive cheating woman—and agree to a steamy bed scene.

But this is not the only stereotype Super Deluxe breaks. The biggest shock comes from Vijay Sethupathi as Shilpa (changed from Manickam), a transgender woman who returns home to her wife and son after disappearing for seven years. Vijay—a macho man of South Indian cinema (think Sunny Deol)—has starred in multiple blockbusters as the ‘hero’ who beats up a dozen goons without getting a scratch himself. He now plays a middle-aged, out of shape, balding transgender woman, who is even sexually molested. Unsurprising though is his performance, for which he is already getting national and international critical acclaims.

Child actor Ashwanth Ashokkumar playing Shilpa’s son Rasukutty is another gem in the film. The actor aptly portrays a young boy longing for his father’s presence. So innocent and untouched by social indoctrination he is that he is ready to accept his father even as a woman. The father-son pair of Manickam/Shilpa and Rasukutty is the highlight of the film and their story speaks of the social stigma attached to sexual and gender preferences in the society and the vulnerability of people who express themselves differently. “Live exactly how the world wants you to. Don’t think originally. Don’t be unique,” Shilpa tells Rasukutty in a scene that compels one to think about how the society restricts one’s individuality and makes ‘aliens’ out of people who dare to behave differently.

Along with a stellar acting performance by the entire cast, the screenplay, direction, and cinematography are extraordinary too. Writer/director Kumararaja weaves the complex narrative of four different sub-plots into a tight roll and creates tension after tension that resolve in unexpected, unpredictable endings. The characters in the sub-plots don’t know each other, yet are all tied in the bigger scheme of life.

A special mention should go to cinematographers P.S Vinod and Nirav Shah who follow the characters from so many angles that the audience feels they’re inside the screen. The audience becomes bystanders and one wouldn’t want to miss a single scene.

If you are getting your doses of South Indian cinema from the Goldmines Telefilms’ YouTube channel with 33.9 million subscribers and constantly trending releases even in Nepal, you have probably watched your fair share of commercial Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malyali movies. But Super Deluxe proves that what Goldmines is feeding you is unhealthy stick-food, fried in the same oil every day. Super Deluxe (available on Netflix) is gourmet. And like all gourmet food, it definitely needs some acquired taste but once you’re used to it, fast food becomes untouchable.

Who should watch it?

One more time, Super Deluxe is not your regular South Indian cinema with Shriya Saran’s dances, Bramhanandan’s comedy, and Rajnikanth’s action. It is a super-intelligent film that disturbs you and compels you to think—hard. The film grapples with your thoughts and grabs your attention for its entire 2hrs 56mins. A must watch.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Genre: Thriller

Director: Thiagarajan Kumararaja

Actors: Ashwanth Ashokkumar, Samantha Akkineni, Vijay Sethupathi

Run time: 2hrs 56mins

As the world reels under the spell of a deadly virus, I reread Dan Brown’s 2013 bestseller, ‘Inferno’. Brown has this uncanny ability to weave fiction around facts, both historical and contemporary. 

In Inferno, Brown gives us a virtual tour of Florence, a city that lies at the center of the novel's plot. Right now, the crowded monuments, museums, streets and gardens of Florence that Brown talks about in his novel have been deserted, or haunted rather, by the novel coronavirus.  

Bertrand Zobrist is a top genetic scientist worried by the global overpopulation. He wants to find a way to keep it in size, and discusses it with the World Health Organization chief Elizabeth Sinskey. The WHO boss agrees that the rate of global population growth needs to be checked. But she is not convinced by Zobrist’s argument that no less than the planet’s fate is on the line. So the billionaire scientist decides to deploy his own resources to do something about it, and hires a secretive group, The Consortium, to hide him from the world for a year.

As the suspense builds, Zobrist seems to be developing a deadly airborne virus that would infect everybody on the planet within a week. By setting the plot in Florence, the hometown of great medieval poet Dante Alighieri, and drawing on Divine Comedy’s first chapter, Inferno, Brown expertly leads readers into an impending gloom. Enter the Black Death and the beaked masks that doctors wore in the 14th century when a third of Europe died of plague. It is likely that the virus being developed by the scientist, a death doctor of sorts, will cut world population to four billion.

In a stirring one-on-one with the WHO chief, the green-eyed transhumanist-scientist talks of the perils of overpopulation: “Those who have never considered stealing will become thieves to feed their families. Those who have never considered killing will kill to provide for their young. All of Dante’s deadly sins—greed, gluttony, treachery, murder, and the rest—will begin percolating … rising up to the surface of humanity, amplified by our evaporating comforts. We are facing a battle for the very soul of man.”

Deriding the WHO efforts to contain population by handing out free condoms in Africa, which end up in “landfills overflowing with unused condoms,” the scientist says measures like it is only causing more environmental problems. He brings up Machiavelli who talked of plagues as the world’s natural way of self-purging.

The protagonist Robert Langdon—the celebrated Harvard professor of art and symbology—then embarks on a scavenger-hunt from Florence to Venice to Istanbul to stop Zobrist from spreading the virus. Accompanying him is Sienna Brooks, Zobrist's former lover-disciple and a brilliant doctor—and a traumatized child prodigy. Readers are constantly at the edge of their seats as they go through the compulsive page-turner. 

Creative people can look into the future. Brown didn’t have the slightest idea that a deadly viral pandemic would strike the globe seven years after he wrote the novel. But he had some imagination. 

When someone who only watches orthodox movies logs into the digital world of Netflix in this corona-included forced break from theaters, the surprises they encounter can be innumerable. It’s a free world of creativity where masala film formulas are tossed out of the window. No wonder countless actors, writers, directors and producers from mainstream cinema have camped to the digital world to showcase their true potential.

“Guilty”—a Netflix original—is one such film that breaks the boundaries of industrial production and brings a fresh narrative that would not fit into a commercial Bollywood cinema. It is a crime thriller that questions the notion of ‘privilege’—the specific socio-economic advantage each of us enjoys thanks to our unique circumstances and upbringings. 

Guilty builds an alleged crime in a college, and how the police, courts, media and society treats the case depending on whether they are included towards the accuser or the accused. Tanu Kumar (Akansha Ranjan Kapoor), a scholarship student accuses college heartthrob Vijay Pratap Singh (Gurfateh Pirzada) of rape. The accused, his girlfriend Nanki Dutta (Kiara Advani) and Vijay’s friends in turn claim that it was consensual and that Tanu was an “easy woman” whom Vijay did not have to force into anything. 

This allegation is at the root of the story, as both the accuser and the accused strive to be heard. Vijay is the son of a wealthy politician and Tanu a low-middle class student. But despite the vast difference in their economic and social backgrounds, the power struggle between them intense. The story, with ample plot twists and turns to qualify as an intriguing thriller, is a complex interweaving of the harsh realities of the society.

Director Ruchi Narain (also the cowriter) does a commendable job of putting together this highly relatable movie. It is a fight between the rich and the poor; the popular and the unpopular; the oppressor and the oppressed—with each side having their supporters who in turn are influenced by their own agendas. Vijay’s girlfriend Nanki, a ‘problem child’ struggling from a mental disorder, takes it upon herself to investigate her cheating boyfriend. 
We see the change in power dynamics through Nanki’s eyes and there are revelations that surprise, shock and unsettle us. 

Bollywood actress Kiara Advani as Nanki steals the show. Appearing with a host of other actors, some of whom have also appeared in Bollywood movies, Kiara is a fun-loving college student turned protective girlfriend and informal crime investigator, and she convinces in each role. With her own skeletons to hide, Nanki is the most layered character in the film and the most important as her character shadows every other. She takes the audience deep into her mind and repeatedly shocks them.

Who should watch it?

Guilty has moments that make us all question our privileges. Yes, you will be entertained. But Guilty also gives you life lessons and changes how you look at and evaluate others.

Guilty

Rating: 3.5 stars
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Run time: 1 hr 49 mins
Actors: Kiara Advani, Akansha Ranjan Kapoor, Gurfateh Pirzada
Director: Ruchi Narain