Few films arrive with as much baggage as director Geetu Mohandas’ Toxic: A Fairy Tale For Grown Ups. Even before the Yash-starrer had reached theatres, Geetu’s political integrity came under attack. However, after the film’s release, the conversations around it reveal that perhaps Toxic’s greatest provocation is not masculine excess, but who gets to tell that story.
A few months earlier, when the film’s teaser and trailers dropped, social media comment sections were filled with a range of reactions. While several netizens praised Yash and Geetu for the scale and audacity of the visuals, several others raised questions on how a woman, especially a feminist, could make a film with such sexual imagery.
Shock and ambiguity about provocative promotional film material is only natural. What is problematic, however, is the attack on a woman filmmaker’s capability, even before her film is allowed to be shown in its entirety. It is important to note here that she is not just any filmmaker, but an acclaimed one, whose debut feature film Liar’s Dice was the country’s official entry to the Oscars in 2015.
The relentless ire followed Geetu after Toxic hit theatres, as well.
To be thoroughly objective, neither the teaser nor trailer of Toxic contained imagery that we have not seen before in films of the genre. In fact, bloodspill, revenge, and objectification of women are applauded as textbook cases of cinematic flair when the maker is a man and the political agenda is to evoke majoritarian nationalism. While interrogating such imagery is every viewer’s right, in Geetu’s case, the backlash seems to not just be about the violence or the lust on screen.
It seems to be tied to her gender, opinions, and proximity to the Women In Cinema Collective (WCC), the formation of which triggered a major churning in the Malayalam film industry, post the 2017 sexual assault of a woman actor in Kochi.
In all fairness, viewers are entitled to have their own take on the film, and this is not about dismissing criticism about Toxic. What warrants discussion is how, in the case of a woman filmmaker, everything becomes more pronounced, almost obligating her to justify why she was given an opportunity, resources, and the space to make what she likes.
An opinion expressed almost a decade ago
A prominent chunk of the backlash against Geetu stems from an event she attended about a decade ago.
At the 2017 edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala, actor Parvathy Thiruvothu spoke about why star vehicle films must not glorify sexism. At first, she did not take the name of the film she was particularly referring to, but on Geetu’s nudge, she named director Nithin Renji Panicker’s Mammootty-starrer Kasaba (2016).
The event happened about ten months after the sexual assault of a popular woman actor in a moving car in Kochi, which actor Dileep was accused of masterminding. Both Parvathy and Geetu were among the core members of the WCC, formed in the aftermath of the assault. Several WCC members, particularly Parvathy, faced cyber harassment and received threats from Mammootty fans for calling out the misogyny in Kasaba. The cyber lynching of these women continued through the decade, taking different shapes in different contexts.
Since then, it is almost as if a section of men in the state have been waiting for any of these women to falter so that they can be attacked for having voiced their disagreement with the power tussle in the film industry in general and films like Kasaba in particular.
When Geetu dropped the teaser of Toxic in 2026, doubts were immediately cast on her ideological integrity, owing to the sexually suggestive visuals in it. Kasaba’s director Nithin Renji Panicker was quick to call the backlash against her “karma”. Later, amidst brewing controversy over Toxic, he shared an image of Mammootty from Kasaba to his Instagram stories, as if to reinforce the film and invalidate the criticism against it.
In an interview, director Roopesh Peethambaran asked whether people still support the criticism against Kasaba, considering “what has happened with Toxic”.
The petty inability of a few men to take criticism has followed a woman filmmaker for almost ten years, culminating in a “now what?” blame game directed at her film. Geetu Mohandas has been constantly picked apart, revealing how unwilling we are to give a woman who has proved herself respect or even the slightest benefit of doubt.
Criticism is a democratic right, and a sexist film will remain sexist, the critique ever relevant, no matter what the person critiquing it goes on to do.
It is impossible for a discerning viewer not to see the intention behind Toxic. While other movies that explore masculine excess like those from the Sandeep Reddy Vanga universe hold virility up as a trophy, Toxic treats it as a mirror. Equating Geetu with her male counterparts to claim that she has betrayed her political stance for personal gains is a stretch. One may disagree with the execution or even the need for such a film, but Toxic is unmistakably different in its vision from an Animal or a Kasaba.
For argument’s sake, even if the verdict is that Toxic is an unnecessary film, the right to fail too is something nobody can take away from the director.
After all, we have seen male actors and filmmakers given several chances and crores of Rupees for “comebacks” despite not just box office failures, but moral and legal transgressions. That Geetu Mohandass too gets the space to evolve is not only fair, but also a matter of right. Her feminist disposition cannot become a prescription listing down what themes she is allowed to make films on.
However, the conversations do not stop at infantilising her, but are extended to the women actors in the film as well.
Sex scenes filmed by a woman
Another chunk of the backlash Toxic faces surrounds the depiction of intimacy. The scenes portraying sexual desire have particularly come under the scanner, with several netizens making lewd comments about Geetu, as well as the women actors in the film.
Actor Kiara Advani, who plays an important character, has been subjected to heavy cyber harassment for a scene depicting sexual interaction. While some “concerned” trolls worry how her real-life partner would take it, others ask why she agreed to “act in a film that is all about sex and violence.”
The same goes for actor Rukmini Vasanth, who has apparently “broken purity” by acting in Toxic.
Needless to say, Yash has been praised for being “out there” with his performance, just like most of his male contemporaries, who are lauded for the excess they perform on screen. None of them is asked why they agreed to do such films, or how their spouses would take it. Some “disheartened” viewers even say that the “sex scenes in Toxic may not have been written by Geetu”, considering Yash has also been credited with the film’s writing.
The problem, therefore, seems to be that Toxic was made by a woman, and that the women actors in it seem to be unhinged about it. The irk stems from the unwillingness to accept that women can conceptualise and execute sexual desire without being apologetic.
In a society that treats desire as the prerogative of men, with women playing docile muses, this response is unsurprising.
Perhaps, then, the real discomfort with Toxic is not what it shows, but who is showing it.
Whether one is in agreement with Toxic’s world or not, it is imperative to remember that the right to artistic expression, including contradiction, is not a privilege reserved for men. Resisting the neatness of a familiar politics, and making something excessive after having once spoken against excess need not cancel one another out simply because the maker is a woman.
Views expressed are the author’s own.