Ninth Finger

Movie : 22 Female Kottayam

Director: Ashique Abu

Written By : Abhilash Kumar,Shyam Pushkaran

Cast :Rima kallingal,Fahad Fazil,Prathap Pothan.

Tessa (Rima Kallingal) is a nursing student in Bangalore with aspiring plans of traveling to Canada for a career. She meets Cyril (Fahad Fazil) from a travel consultancy while working with the agency for setting up her Visa. They soon fall in love and starts living together. One day they go to a pub, from there the story takes a different route. The story is all about unexpected happenings a nurse from Kottayam has to face in her life. In the end, Tessa performs an 'operation' on Cyril!.

22 Female Kottayam-Malayalm movie poster

Ashique Abu's latest film was able to catch the attention even before release with it's promos in Youtube. The film also said to be making a good business in the box office.I was curious to see the movie and today I got a chance.For the first time i saw the leading actress' name appears in the starting credit as the first entry!

 The movie is all about a fighter girl(or female as in title). She is fighting with her enemies.Not using muscles,then how? The director has an answer for that. Woman has a dangerous weapon with her-which is her power and weakness at the same time.  It's evident that the influence of 'woman fighting movies' (as shown in the end credit) in 22 female Kottayam. How a girl paying her revenge to those villains(who raped her)? 

Looks like new generation movies should be shot in a metro or a slum.Here the metro Bangalore background helps to bring the feeling of 'abandoned' in an unknown world.I,however felt that the 'revenge plan' is the basic idea of the whole movie.That particular 'revenge' action needs our 'hero', Tessa as someone from medical profession. They conveniently chose the nursing field.Then they created the 'villains' for the revenge.But why should she pay revenge to some other people in this manner? They created the reason also.But overall i felt a lack of depth,though it deals with a serious issue(woman safety).

Rima Kallingal as Tessa was refreshing from our usual heroines.Usually female oriented movies would have at least on song sequence where the heroine sings and runs here and there in the green paddy field.Ashique Abu avoids all that.Of course,it's a 'new generation' Malayalam movie!

Fahad Fazil as Cyril was also good.He should be appreciated for choosing a character like this.He joins the club of new generation versatile actors including Indrajith,Jayasury,Anoop Menon etc.

Prathap Pothan had nothing much to do besides delivering dialogs in his style.

The director, Ashique Abu should have looked for more depth in the story.I felt that suddenly the emotional movie turned as a revenge saga.Cinematography by Shyju Khalid looked good.Editing by Vivek Harshan was ok, The crew also obeyed the 'beep' theory of  'new generation movies'(the media calls so)!.