The year’s rush of activity for Parvathy began with the release of Ullozhukku, in which she starred with the legendary Urvashi. The film tells a story of female bonding in circumstances that lend themselves more easily to animosity. This low-budget venture was a financial and critical hit in theatres, and continues to receive praise from audiences since it dropped on Amazon Prime Video.
Next came her acclaimed performance in the short film Kazhcha (Vision) in Manorathangal (Mindscapes), the Malayalam anthology on Zee5 dedicated to MT Vasudevan Nair’s writings and starring an ensemble of Malayalam cinema heavyweights. Tamil director Pa Ranjith’s Thangalaan (Son of Gold), in which she co-stars with Vikram, is currently in theatres.
To grasp the true value of this flood of Parvathy starrers, it is important to read the ‘ullozhukku’ — undercurrent – that has affected her work in recent years. Parvathy was hot property in Malayalam cinema in 2017 when a drastic turn of events – the abduction and sexual assault of a prominent woman artist in a moving car – changed the course of her life. By then, she had established her reliability at the box-office with a spate of back-to-back hits – Bangalore Days, Ennu Ninte Moideen (Yours Truly, Moideen), and Charlie among them – in addition to raking in awards.
The young star decided to risk everything though when she joined hands with other women professionals in the Malayalam film industry, initially to support the survivor, and soon thereafter to form Women in Cinema Collective (WCC), a pioneering organisation striving to achieve gender equality and dignity for women in film.
Parvathy and other WCC members have said since that they lost work because WCC was seen as a group of trouble-makers. You simply need to examine Parvathy’s journey from 2017 onwards to know that this is true. She had a central role that year in Mahesh Narayanan’s Take-Off, which proved to be a blockbuster, and also made her Hindi debut in Tanuja Chandra’s Qarib Qarib Singlle (Almost Single). In 2019 came another Malayalam hit with another highly lauded central role – Manu Ashokan’s Uyare (Up Above), in which she played an acid attack survivor. This was followed by a pivotal part in Aashiq Abu’s brilliant multi-starrer Virus (2019). These four films apart, the seven years since 2017 have been dotted with supporting roles, cameos, anthologies, and some non-descript ventures. There is a shift in the air in 2024 though. Thangalaan is a hero-centric film in which she plays the protagonist’s wife. It has not raked in the money it was expected to earn considering Ranjith’s track record. However, it was massively marketed, it gave her the visibility every star needs, her performance was critically acclaimed, and its box-office struggles in the same year as Ullozhukku’s gains send out a compelling message in a country that still views women-centred films as financial risks and makes very few of them.
Meanwhile, news bulletins have been filled with discussions about the Hema Committee Report on the condition of women in the Malayalam film industry, a pathbreaking study commissioned by the Kerala government at WCC’s urging. At this crucial moment with a potential all-India impact, Parvathy has been one of the organisation’s vocal spokespersons.
2024 then is the Year of Parvathy, a star clawing her way back to the stage she deserves after she staked her career on her activism, and was rewarded with abuse and threats for doing so. It’s too early to tell whether her crowded filmography in recent months will be repeated in coming years. What we can say for sure is that she is a change-maker whose graph is a reminder that there is no single definition for success.