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| Vedi Vazhipadu |
Going by the tag, Vedi Vazhipadu is meant for adults. However no one gets disrobed in this film. No titillating sounds are heard. Except for some mild foreplay involving a few controlled caresses, the adults in the film don't even make love to each other.
The entire film in fact plays out on a sacred day. While the women are busy with pongala festivities, their husbands deal with a hooker. They are glued to television to keep a tab on the time so that each one can take turns with the hooker.
Of the lot, Sanjay (Saiju Kurup) is a confused, cowering soul. His wife scares him. He tries to rediscover his lost machismo with the hooker. He rolls his eyes at her, flaunts his weirdly trimmed thick, dark moustache. She just stares back at him, blankly. Pradeep (Sreejith Ravi) is a man perennially dissatisfied with the ways of his wife. Rahul is an idle person, who smiles every time he talks to his wife.
Shambhu Purushothaman has an unabashed, rid
iculous openness as he would show Sanjay fiddling with a condom or his friends drool over a sex video on screen while waiting for their turns. In the meantime, there is a half-hearted attempt at probing the consciousness of each of his characters. Unwittingly the woman brings about a shocking, shameful and shattering realization in each man.
The film doesn't make any remote attempts to touch upon the profundity of sin or the ironies that crop up in a profane manner. One shot shows the prostitute lazily ambling along the clot of devout women carrying pongala pots. The general weakness of human nature that prompts infidelity and immoral affairs find a faint mention. All of these seem half-hearted, mostly aimless even while conjuring up scattered images of human souls breaking down under material pursuit or emotional weariness.
Vedi Vazhipadu has a playful silliness which gets a tad licentious most of the time, one of the reasons why it tends to repel than attract. It falls way short of the bold, coming of age movies despite its generous dose of innuendoes or some explicit scenes simply because of a shallow narrative.