Till The Family Man 2 happened, Samantha was largely playing the 'cute' heroine in Telugu and Tamil cinema. Oh! Baby (2019) proved that she could do more, but it was not until the Raj & DK web series that the audience got to see her badass version. She was seamless in the action scenes – fast, agile and convincing. Barring Vijayashanti who did several such films and a few women actors who did an occasional stunt sequence themselves, this was pretty much a male bastion. Something Samantha might just be able to change if she gets the right people to back her, as Yashoda proves.
That said, Yashoda, written and directed by Hari-Harish, is not without its problems, the biggest of which is the male gaze that is glaringly obvious despite the film having a female hero at its heart. This is a film about a surrogacy clinic that hides a darker purpose, and the title refers to Hindu god Krishna’s foster mother.
Before we get into the film and how it holds up, some context. It was only in 2022 that commercial surrogacy became illegal in India – a move that several activists and commercial surrogates have objected to though it was ostensibly made to prevent the exploitation of poor women. In a country that glorifies motherhood and expects all women to desire it, the discourse around surrogacy is seldom cognizant of women’s agency in making these decisions. The idea that a woman would want to pay another woman to carry her foetus to term – for whatever reason, ranging from medical to professional – is repugnant to many; also repugnant is the idea that a poor woman may decide to become a surrogate to pay off debt, buy property, or attend to whatever pressing financial need, instead of slogging for several years in other kinds of exploitative situations that pay way less. In the binary of ‘good’ women who want to become mothers biologically and keep their babies, and ‘bad’ women who decide otherwise, there is very little nuance in the debate. Yashoda is no different.
Samantha plays the titular character, a young woman who is desperate to save her sister’s life. She decides to become a surrogate, and is whisked off to Eva, a clinic that gives off Atwoodian vibes. Samantha plays the wide-eyed, babe lost in the woods with ease, but the writing struggles to make the scenes convincing. She meets other pregnant women at Eva and the scenes are similar to those cringe-inducing women’s hostel scenes that we’ve seen for aeons, with a strict warden to boot. There is a conversation where the women share their reasons for becoming surrogates but the bad acting means that you are barely moved.
Varalaxmi Sarathkumar plays Madhu, the always fashionable chief of the clinic. There’s also Dr Gautham (Unni Mukundan), who develops a soft spot for Yashoda. Intersecting with this plot thread is a car crash that killed a businessman and a model, and another involving the death of a foreign actor named Olivia. Yashoda has several interesting ideas but the clumsy direction and subpar writing don’t allow these to develop. Several scenes are staged like a stage play, with the characters standing in awkward arcs and mouthing their lines. Some like the one with the Anniyan-like buffalo herd are so over-the-top that you really wonder if criminals who are running such a super secret operation would want to make such flashy moves.
The film falls back on a load of misogyny to define its central premise. The villain is a woman who never wanted pregnancy because it would 'ruin' her beauty – a common accusation of 'selfishness' thrown at women who choose not to become mothers. The challenges that come with pregnancy and childbirth – from health complications to discrimination at work and societal pressures – are seldom represented in cinema, and Yashoda is happy to reiterate the idea that a woman who doesn’t want to become a mother must be an abnormal psychopath. In contrast to this oh-so-wicked woman are the noble ladies brimming with maternal feelings. There is also the awful stereotyping of a person who is coded as queer – isn’t it high time that we did away with such insensitivity on screen?
The film comes alive in the action scenes with Samantha. The actor is quick on her feet, and her deft moves add some much needed excitement to the screenplay that depends too much on speechifying for its revelations. I was thinking about Vijay’s “Suspense odaye saavu” line from Thuppaki where he takes a jibe at the cinematic convention of explaining all that happened to fill the knowledge gap of someone you are going to kill. If only the bad people in Yashoda had taken a cue from Thalapathi! The background score, too, is inconsistent, not really elevating the suspense in the visuals.
Yashoda has quite a few loose ends as it draws to a close, leaving the viewer dissatisfied. Ultimately, this is a film on what's mainly a female experience written and directed by men, with the hero and the villain being women. It’s not surprising that this is the result.
PS: Men desire youth and good looks, too. The film industry, in fact, is full of aged men who are firmly clinging to their youth, with wigs, botox and whatever else. Elaborating on this postscript will be a big spoiler, but I had to make the point.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film's producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015.