The Telugu movie ‘Ammu’ starring Aishwarya Lekshmi tells a story of domestic violence. This year, we witnessed a similar story with Netflix’s ‘Darlings’. Both films have husbands who apparently love their wives but cannot help beating them up for petty reasons.
Vijay Verma and Alia Bhatt’s ‘Darlings’ was a film about a husband who beats up his wife everytime he is drunk. Alia’s character becomes fed up after tolerating too much and decides to take revenge in her own way. ‘Ammu’ is about a police officer who preaches about domestic violence outside but beats his own wife in the home. Here too, the wife gets tired of the everyday torture and decides to take revenge.
There are tweets and posts about Ammu being dishearteningly similar to Darlings and why there is no reason to watch it after having watched Darlings. Not all of the points can be agreed to because Ammu is a wonderfully made movie without any doubt. But it is cliché and it is the biggest negative point.
Sai Pallavi’s ‘Gargi’ is not a movie on domestic violence. But it has a dark theme and it can be easily related to these two. The courtroom drama and thriller was about a daughter who wants to prove her father innocent in a gang rape case but later finds out that her father was actually involved. Both Darlings and Gargi were successful and Ammu kind of fell flat in front of them.
The hype with Ammu was quite good. But there was an expectation of a somewhat different story too. But Ammu again told a story that has been told again and again.
Still, if you want to see a decent movie with good performances and good direction, go and watch Ammu on Amazon Prime Video. It is available in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada.