‘Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey’ review: Darshana, Basil Joseph’s black comedy is laugh-out-loud

Darshana Rajendran as Jaya in 'Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hai'. (Screen grab)

Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey has the female lead’s name four times in the film, so not only should you expect it to be from her perspective, you should know that it will be underlined several times. Vipin Das’s film is a dark comedy about domestic violence that pulls off humour with an unexpected role reversal; at times, it might strike you as being problematic, but it’s difficult to be critical when you are laughing your head off.

Darshana Rajendran plays Jaya, but it’s her father we meet first. He works as a supervisor, bossing women employees around at a workshop. He calls them “Edi” (a casual way to refer to a woman, can be considered disrespectful) and doesn’t believe in addressing them by name. When he has a daughter, the women joke around that she may not need a name at all since her father can just call her “Edi”. Yet, when naming her, her father claims that he will raise her like Nehru raised Indira Gandhi.

Is this the beginning of a patriarch becoming a feminist? A story about a man seeing things from a woman’s point of view because of his love for his daughter? Short answer: No. The film isn’t interested in romanticising an Indian girlhood; for all the exaggeration and absurd comedy that comes later, it presents a wholly realistic picture of how families ultimately view their daughters – chattel that must be transferred to another home. The title song thus details all that a girl must be; the desirable “feminine” qualities that will uphold her family name. She must be just like all other “acceptable” women. She could have just been named “Edi” instead of Jaya, since nobody is interested in seeing her as an individual.

Darshana is superb as Jaya (great casting for the little Jaya too), a young woman who is slowly realising that her family does not really put her interests first. But rebellion doesn’t come easily to her. She’s a bystander in her own life, watching others make decisions on her behalf. In a scene in which the family is discussing where she must study and what, the camera is focused on her face as she eavesdrops on the conversation. She smiles hopefully when a point is made in her favour and becomes upset when it goes against her. It is only when she cannot take it any more that she bursts into the room.

Like Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen, Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey also points to the invisible labour of women – be it the early shot of a man’s legs, still in bed, even as his wife packs lunch and sets off to work, or the backbreaking job of squeezing idiyappam day after day. These scenes, presented as routine in most Indian films (how many scenes have we watched where the mother is introduced making dosas for the family?), become brutal, violent, when we view them in different light.

Basil Joseph plays Rajesh, Jaya’s husband. He’s a controlling, cruel man but the character is written and enacted so well that we find him hilarious without ever forgetting his violence. The screenplay straddles discomfiting sequences with black humour that is triggered by our collective recognition of this toxic family – we all know of one or live in one. Each time Rajesh’s mother (a terrific Kudassanad Kanakam) said her son is so “paavam” (innocent), the theatre dissolved in laughter. I was also reminded of Sreenivasan’s classic comedy Vadakkunokkiyantram (1989) in parts of the second half.

Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey is helped immensely by the performances of its supporting cast that make the situational comedy work. Manju Pillai has only one scene but she nails it with alacrity. Aju Varghese’s “progressive” man act is howlarious too. The songs and background score are in sync with the film’s tone – sober when it becomes serious but mindful of the film’s genre.

How the film overturns Jaya’s fate comes as a surprise, and both Darshana and Basil are spectacular in the scene. The over-the-top staging pushes it from first to fourth gear without any warning, and you can’t help but laugh out loud. Is it right to be amused by it? More relevant perhaps is the question – why are we amused by it? Because it is so far-fetched that it becomes a form of wish fulfilment. If we were to unpack Jaya’s strategy, it works because her actions take place in a patriarchal society. In that sense, the film doesn’t quite dismantle patriarchy (like TGIK did), it projects a “What if” fantasy without breaking the mould. But the catharsis it offers cannot be written away lightly, nor the impact of making an entertaining film that everybody wants to watch, and isn’t only for an already-converted niche audience.

Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey to the cast and crew. This film deserves its victory lap.