Chithha Movie Review: In many ways, Chithha is a companion piece to last year’s superb Gargi. As in that film, this one, too, deals with sexual abuse. Both the films have the tone of a thriller, but refrain from sensationalism and handle the fallout of abuse in a sensitive and empathetic manner. Both show the impact that an accusation of sexual abuse can have on an individual and a family as a whole. Both have confident writing and filmmaking, and come with codas that are meant to provide a hopeful closure but feel quite unnecessary.

Where Chithha differs, in addition to its small-town setting, is in the gender of the protagonist. While Gargi had a female protagonist who fights for what’s right through lawful means, here, we have a male protagonist whose reaction is masochist. In a way, this is also a commentary on the misplaced sense of righteousness that men have when it comes to crimes like abuse, and the Catch 22 situation that women find themselves in – on one end, they have to deal with the horror of encountering cold-blooded abusers, and on the other, they have to deal with hot-headed protective figures whose immediate reaction to their turmoil is revenge rather than reassurance.

Chithha’s protagonist, Easwaran (Siddharth) aka Eesu is someone who has had to take over the responsibility of taking care of his family at a young age. We learn that he’s got his government job in the sanitation department due to the sudden death of his elder brother, and is now the caretaker of his sister-in-law (Anjali Nair) and Settai, his eight-year-old niece, Sundari (Sahasra Sree). We see him rekindling his romance with his school mate and now co-worker Sakthi (Nimisha Sajayan). We see the almost familial relationship that he shares with his friend, Vadivelu, a lower-level undercover cop, and his niece Ponni (S Abiya Tasneem). We sense the tragedy that’s about to befall all of these characters in a scene where cops discuss a locality that has become notoriously unsafe for women.

But before that, Arun Kumar shows us the beautiful bond between Eesu and Settai. We see how affectionate she is towards him and how protective he feels about her. In an early scene, we see him chiding a school watchman when the latter jokes that the girl has left for home on her own. We know that a tragedy is waiting to unfold, but until then the film is suffused with feel-goodness. Balaji Subramaniam’s cinematography fills the frames with warmth.

And then, tragedy strikes! But not in the way we expect it to. We see how the slightest sense of doubt, cropping up with the utterance of a seemingly well-meaning line or an action as simple as a mother choosing to sleep with her daughter on her bed, can be devastating.

And before the characters – and we, the audience – can recover from it, another traumatic episode starts unfolding. The cinematography, now largely handheld, creates a sense of unease and dread, while the writing and filmmaking turn deceptively potent that by the time the interval block plays out, it makes us want to rush out, not wanting to see something bad happen to a character, but at the same time, stay transfixed to witness the hard-to-watch events playing out on screen. From feel-good, we are deep in feel-bad.

Some time later, drama turns into a race-against-time survival thriller, though we do wish the director had refrained from having a scene that depicts the abusive ways of the kidnapper. Given that the very idea of a little girl being held captive by a serial rapist and murderer is enough to convey the horrific nature of the situation, do we really want to see the how? Even if the film doesn’t show anything explicitly, wouldn’t it have been better to let the audience play out such a scenario in their minds?

Thankfully, we immediately get one of the most tense stretches that we will ever see in a film this year when events play out at a police checkpoint. The payoff that follows is so gratifying that all we want to do is stand up and cheer.

But the downside is that the events that follow have a hard time living up to this high point. We get a revenge angle that ends with a gratuitous scene that feels tonally off from the rest of the film as it is played to the gallery (Vishal Chandrashekar’s understated score, too, suddenly turns celebratory here). And a revelation involving a major character doesn’t feel surprising enough. That said, the observations that the character makes are to the point, and the way this scene ends, with a victim asserting herself is commendable.

The performances, too, are top-notch. There’s a hitherto unseen intensity and grittiness in Siddharth’s performance while Nimisha Sajayan makes a confident debut. The two child actresses, too, shine, especially Sahasra Sree, who conveys the wounded, scared spirit of a victim in a deeply affecting manner.

There are also a couple of tender moments amidst all the grimness. A survivor rushing towards a character and giving a hug, and a scene between two friends who have undergone a shared experience forging a stronger bond. It is such profound moments that elevate Chithha into something vital in these times.