Oruthee

Story: Radhamani, a ticket collector in a government boat, tries to take a gold loan in exchange for her daughter’s new necklace. What awaits her is a ton of problems that he hardly foresaw.

Review: It’s been almost ten years since we saw Navya Nair in Malayalam industry. The multiple State-Award winner actress makes a quality comeback through the V K Prakash film Oruthee, which is based on a true incident in a middle-class woman’s life.

Radhamani (Navya) is a ticket collector in a Kochi boat, and she scrambles to make the ends meet in her family consisting of two school-going children, an elderly mother and her husband, who is doing lowly jobs, abroad. When her little daughter catches food-poisoning, she tries to take a gold loan with a necklace they had bought from a renowned jewelery. Little does she know that what awaits her are problems bigger than the astronomical hospital bill she is trying to pay.

This is one of those hard-to-believe true stories in which one wonders how a middle-class woman plagued with one issue after the other manages to chase them head on, alongside fighting a skeptical husband, some powerful businessman and her financial struggles. Navya seizes the film’s eponymous role literally with fire in her eyes and fills it with all ultimate energy and emotions that one can muster. No, she is no superwoman but a commoner who thoroughly exudes enough humanity for most of the viewers to connect with her situation. There are even moments when one would wonder whether her performance would upstage the story, but what she injects into the tale is the right spirit that it deserves. Without a doubt, her portrayal of Radhamani is the highpoint of the film. Vinayakan, too, stands out as a fearless police officer whose tale ties in with that of the central character.

The end of the film is certainly predictable, but it’s emotionally satisfying enough for the audience to root for Radhamani and the handful of characters who support her. There are a few moments in the film which can seem a tad tough to believe, like the many hours-long chase sequence, but in instances like these, truth can definitely seem stranger than fiction.

Oruthee is definitely worth a watch for Navya’s performance and to applaud the bravery of the woman whose life the film is based on.