In ‘Angammal’, a sari blouse comes between a woman and her son

In the Tamil movie Angammal, the distance between a woman and her son is measured by a piece of cloth. Pavalam, a doctor who has moved away from his village, is keen to marry his girlfriend but is concerned about his mother Angammal’s refusal to wear a blouse with her sari.

Angammal manages just fine without the garment. The strong-willed woman has a few other similarly attired friends in her village, but they are a vanishing breed. Vipin Radhakrishnan’s engrossing film explores the tensions that arise from Pavalam’s attempts to persuade Angammal to adopt what he sees as a socially permissible dress code and Angammal’s resistance to what she regards as needless handwringing.

After a premiere at the recently concluded MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, Angammal is aiming for a theatrical release in early January. Radhakrishnan’s second feature after the Malayalam-language Ave Maria (2018) is set in the mid-1990s. Angammal is based on acclaimed Tamil writer Perumal Murugan’s short story Kodithuni.

“The straightforward storyline of a city-educated son trying to persuade his mother to wear a blouse is amusing on the surface,” Radhakrishnan observed. “Additionally, the deeper political themes woven in the story make it feel universally relevant today to be adapted into a feature.”

These themes include the conservatism that underpin dress codes,...

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