Charukesh Sekar’s ‘Ammu’, on Amazon Prime Video, with Aishwarya Lekshmi and Naveen Chandra, is a partly effective domestic-abuse drama

Spoilers ahead…

Charukesh Sekar’s Ammu opens with an arranged marriage scenario. Ammu (Aishwarya Lekshmi) is brought in front of Ravi (Naveen Chandra) and his family. There are no doubts about the alliance, as the families live in the same neighbourhood and know of each other. It’s just a formality. Ravi’s mother tells Ammu to behave as she normally would. But something about the occasion makes Ammu more subdued than she’d usually be. Earlier, she wondered whether she liked Ravi. The answer was tentative. “I think so,” she says. Now, the elders ask the couple-to-be to stand next to each other. She still has an “I think so” look. In a startling cut, we move from this scenario to Ammu and Naveen after marriage, after they’ve just had sex. Like many scenes in the film, this is reflected in a mirror, which acts as a distancing device. What we are seeing is real – and yet a lie.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://www.galatta.com/telugu/movie/review/ammu/

And you can watch the video review here:

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