Ananya review: Radical film on female sexuality that falls short of stakes it raises for women

Assamese director Anup Manna’s feature Ananya (Unparalleled) is a variegated experience of radical moments and patriarchal appeasement. The overarching premise of the film follows a single thematic — “The mind of a human being is not static. It moves from one place to another.” This thematic is explored through the lead female protagonist Ananya, a doe-eyed painter and professor who develops an epistolary romance with a famous poet, only to discover that he is a congenitally disabled man.

This shocking discovery unsettles her but she swiftly overcomes herself and dismisses the disability as a mild inconvenience. What follows is a rushed marriage that slowly unravels into a pragmatic dissatisfaction with the gradual discovery of the impossibility of the fulfillment of desires of a conventional relationship.

Ananya’s resolve and commitment to her disabled husband — that idealizes her in her colleagues’ views — continues to waver under her desires and is soon thrown asunder by the arrival of a new colleague-poet leading to an attraction that confuses her further. Ananya grapples with the morality of this new relationship, the burden of being hailed (in her husband’s poetry collection written in her name and by her colleagues) for her sacrificial instincts, and the ennui and the emptiness that her mind inevitably descends into.

At a glance the film’s narrative seems to be a stock platitude, a story we have all heard before beset with patriarchal expectations and sentimentalism. However, there are many conscious and incidental virtues that allow an engaging experience of watching the film. A certain radicalism of voices and female interiority is crafted through a discussion of Ananya’s sexuality. As a deeply regional film rooted in the mores of the local cultural specificity of Assam, the exploration of female sexuality and desire is a wonderous feat. The implications of masturbation, the use of the imagery of water and colours along with Ananya’s own fantasies provide a much-needed insight into her sexuality. A reverberating scene is a sexually frustrated Ananya rushing off into the bathroom and fantasizing about a sexual relationship with her husband while the sound of a tap incessantly running in the background symbolizing her desire.

In a parallel cinema feature with a lack of technical finesse or lustrous imagery, there are some beautiful shots tracing their lineage to art cinema which, although in striking contrast to the tenor of the film, do add moments of poignancy and aesthetic possibilities.

The use of the imagery of water, a tethered boat that goes nowhere, and the relationship between poetry and painting create a metaphorical structure that is quite simply coded and easily accessible. It is a commendable attempt in low-budget cinema from the non-mainstream regions of India that highlight the many ways cinematic aesthetic is internalized and culturally localized in the pan-Indian contexts.

Where the film inevitably fails is its overall subtext and the unfailing retreat into the patriarchal fold which the ending of the film falls into. Drawing from a universal concept of the frailty of the mind and positing it on the body of a female protagonist runs the heavy risk of syllogistic conclusions of the frailty of the female. The ending may satisfy many viewers for its return to conventionality and its upholding of expected norms for women regarding motherhood and sacrificial tropes. However, in the post #MeToo world and the fast-changing dialogues on female experience and feminism within the world and Indian society specifically, the tropes of the film end up being regressive despite its incidental radical depiction of the sexuality of women from local cultures.

Ananya should be watched for the boundaries of depiction of female interiority and sexuality that it pushes through its narrative and aesthetics. However, a discerning viewer will need to reconsider the stringent patriarchal expectations hiding behind its seemingly universal philosophical conception of the frailty of the mind, and the expectations from women, and the implicit condemnation of their choices that has been the long-standing fallback to conclusions for films where women disrupt the norm by exercising agency.

Ananya needs to be understood on her own turf and ideas, and not in the mould that the film ends up locking her in. It is the possibility of listening to a film as it speaks out for itself despite directorial insistence of ideas is what should be the manner of approaching the film’s ideas.