REVIEW: SARA’S (Malayalam)

Producers- P.K. Muralidharan and Shantha Murali

Director- Jude Anthany Joseph

Star Cast-Anna Ben, Sunny Wayne, Siddique, Dominc Wilson, Posani Krishna Murali,Margret Antony, Siju Wilson, Benny P and Nayarambalam

Direct OTT Platform- Amazon Prime Video

Genre-Social

Sensitive & Relatable!

Rating- ***1/2

Jyothi Venkatesh

The film comes like a whiff of fresh air on Amazon Prime Video. It is about Sara Vincent (Anna Ben) who is a very clear headed young woman who never wanted kids, and her dream is to be a filmmaker.

Love, life and wedding happen, and with them come the inevitable – societal pressure to conform or else a poor married woman is dismissed off as a bhaanj.

The film Sara’s is a refreshingly different film with a heart which says how Sara deals with the delicate as well as sensitive issue when it confronts her.

Sara’s is basically the story of most Indian households but one that’s rarely discussed, especially in mainstream cinema.

It is centered on Sara, played by Anna Ben, and how she’s almost convinced to sacrifice her career and dreams when she gets pregnant

Luckily for Sara, even while she is busy chasing her dream to be a filmmaker, she meets Jeevan( Sunny Wayne) , who also doesn’t entertain kids.

Attraction sparks and their connection grows, amidst conventional family members and society.

As is the wont always, while Sara is confident in her dreams and decisions, those around her, especially her mother in law, desperately want a grand kid from Sara and her son.

Jude Anthany deserves applause for making a film that sets out to tackle the time immemorial struggle that a newlywed woman faces in her in-law's home where she is asked to be a baby producing machine instead of nursing her latent desire to do something professionally .

Jade has set out to present the idea of voluntary childlessness, with his own aesthetic sense and how Sara succeeds in combating the judgments, social exclusions, ridiculous super-parent expectations and more that child-free couples face, both from immediate families and those outside of it, in a remarkable way without sermonizing or for that matter boring the audiences.

Popular faces like TV personality Dhanya Varma and ‘Collector-Bro’ Prashant Nair impress you with their interesting character roles.

The film’s music by Shaan Rahman is catchy enough to add a sweet melody to Sara’s. Anna Ben is very eminently relatable as Sara, who dreams to see credits roll with her name at the end of the movie that she directs and literally lives her role to perfection.

Sara sets out to portray her struggles, which stem a lot due to her gender, very honestly in the film, which also shows how men in the so-called ‘child-bearing years’ too can be tone-deaf to individual choices, through the character Jeevan. Sunny Wayne as Jeevan underplays his character effectively

It is a film which tears you sentimentally as you start relating to the character of Sara Vincent and root for her with a lot of sensitivity.

Kudos to all the three in that order- Akshay Hareesh who has written the subject, Jude Anthany Joseph who has directed it and last but not the least Anna Ben who plays the role of the female protagonist in the film.

More Photos: