Judgementall Hai Kya

Rear Window (1954) by Hitchcock made the unreliable narrator narrative popular in Hollywood. Thanks to films like Gone Girl and Girl On A Train, it's getting a resurgence in the West. In Bollywood, the recent Badla gave us an example of how twisted such narratives can be. Judgementall Hai Kya is carrying the torch forward. It's another female-centric film that leads you across numerous red herrings before finally reaching the denouement.

We are gifted with a disturbing scene since the start which hints how this ain't going to be normal at all. Bobby (Kangana Ranaut) grows up carrying the baggage of a disturbed childhood. Witnessing the domestic violence, she believes there are issues in the basic concept of love. Bobby rents a part of her apartment to Keshav (Rajkummar Rao) and his girlfriend Reema (Amyra Dastur).

The 1930s British play Gas Light gets a contemporary airing via the Ramayana in Prakash Kovelamudi's Judgementall Hai Kya, and the results are as in-between and all over the place as might be expected. The Telugu director's Hindi-language debut, based on a shambolic screenplay by Kanika Dhillon, borrows a few ideas from the famous English drama, in which a man psychologically manipulates his wife to deny her suspicions that he is a murderer.

What if roles were reversed and instead of Raavan pursuing Sita in the Ramayan, she were to sense his intentions in advance and go after him? The question is at the core of director Prakash Kovelmudi's Judgementall Hai Kya which places a story of domestic abuse, the effect of violence on a child's psyche and mental illness against the backdrop of one of India's favourite epics.

We first see her upside down but also right side up. When we meet Kangana Ranaut in Judgementall Hai Kya, we see her feet, mid-air and upside-down. They happen to be surrounded by framed pictures of Ranaut in outlandish, overdone costumes: as Pamela Anderson in the red Baywatch swimsuit, or wearing Angelina Jolie's distinctive Maleficent horns. She's doing yoga, a headstand against a wall-ful of photos she regularly gets taken, then photoshopped - much like Govinda used to put up pictures as a cop and a lawyer in Raja Babu.

A psychological drama with a welcome feminist slant, Prakash Kovelamudi's Judgementall Hai Kya goes zip-zap-zoom over a runtime of two hours, alternating between dashes of dark humour and sweeps of surreal fancy. When the difficult blend clicks, the film is a delight. When it doesn't, it wobbles a touch, especially in a less-than-perfect second half and a not wholly convincing finale.

Meet Bobby- a little girl hiding and watching a spat between her parents. She knows what to expect next - an ugly fight that will result in heart-breaking consequences. While in hiding she notices a cockroach- one that becomes a leitmotif for every time she spots what is wrong with the normal around her. Bobby, now an orphan, understandably grows up to be a problematic presence for her extended family.

JUDGEMENTALL HAI KYA is the story of a woman with mental issues trying to solve a supposed crime. Bobby Batliwala Grewal (Kangana Ranaut) is an orphan who has lost her parents at a young age. She is partly responsible for their demise. Bobby grows up as a disturbed individual and her grandfather (Lalit Behl) takes care of her. She stays separately from him and works as a dubbing artiste for South films. She is on medication for her mental condition but she doesn't consume her pills.

Call it metaphoric or in sync with the controversy between Kangana and a section of media, when she says, '"Kaise kaise logon ko yahan kaam mil jaaata hai,", her character Bobby a dubbing artiste aspiring to be an actress enjoys digitally enhancing her image as the actress for whom she has dubbed as she has the tendency in getting into the skin of the character easily but not able to move out after her dubbing gets over. She even digitally manipulates images with people she gets obsessed with.

The trickiest thing about a movie showcasing an unhinged character is that it can appear half-cocked if it slips even an inch from its graph. And Judgementall Hai Kya has one of the kookiest, weirdest, flakiest female characters ever to grace Hindi films.

A brutal childhood trauma leaves Bobby (Kangana Ranaut) diagnosed with acute psychosis in her adult years. And after doing time at an asylum for assaulting a coworker, she is let off on the condition that she will stick with her medication. Bobby is a dubbing artist for movies, where she is the voice of the female lead characters.

Kaun galat hai? Kaun sahi? Agnipariksha toh deni padegi. Har yug mein di jaati hai." Ages ago, Sita had to go through an agniparishka to prove her chastity, and in Prakash Kovelamudi's psychotic world, agnipariksha is the real test of Bobby Garewal's (Kangana Ranaut) sanity. A damaged and psychotic woman who is the black sheep of Garewal family. A loner with an eclectic sense of fashion and a dark sense of humour. A sceptic who trusts no one but her mind and its playful games.