Month of Madhu review: Swathi Reddy shines in a warmly moving relationship drama

In her late 30s, Lekha (Swathi Reddy) files for divorce from Madhusudhan (Naveen Chandra), whom she has loved since she was in class 10. As an adolescent, she complains playfully to his best friend about how she ranks low on his priorities while she puts him even before herself, how she has to make all the effort in their relationship, and how his erratic anger bothers her. She says it while holding on to her boyfriend’s arm, leaning on his shoulder – not a serious grouse, just good-natured banter. But 20 years later, these ‘minor problems’ have aggravated with alcoholism, and become the grounds for her divorce petition. 

Though Madhusudhan is an important character in Month of Madhu, Srikanth Nagothi’s film isn’t named just after him. Month of Madhu is also about Madhumathi (Shreya Navile), a high-spirited 19-year-old NRI who seems to have mastered self-love. Visiting India for a cousin’s wedding, she quickly learns that not everyone loves her well-meaning extroversion, but that doesn’t entirely faze her. Feeling suffocated by her overbearing mother (Manjula Ghattamaneni), she insists on staying back in Vizag for a month with her grandparents, to “meet and understand” more people in India, and to deal with her American-Born Desi Confusion.

Madhu and a now full-time alcoholic Madhusudhan meet in a chance encounter, and their stories unfold – Madhu’s present, and Madhusudhan’s past, which he refuses to let go of or even earnestly retrospect upon.

Like his debut film Bhanumathi Ramakrishna, Srikanth’s Month of Madhu also plays out as an unhurried character study of its protagonists – here, Madhu and Lekha (and Madhusudhan). The story moves back and forth between Lekha’s past – it’s 2003, she is 19 and hopelessly in love with Madhusudhan – and the present, when Madhu is of the same age. They’re from different generations (Madhu could’ve been Lekha’s daughter if she hadn’t terminated her pregnancy), and very different socio-economic backgrounds. Madhu is a wealthy NRI, while Lekha and Madhusudhan seem to belong to ‘middle class’ families. Lekha takes up a job as an attendant at a private hospital after leaving Madhusudhan, who is fired from his job at a factory. But Lekha and the young Madhu are also alike in many ways: undaunted, unafraid to love, eager to be loved. 

Swathi is wonderful as Lekha. The actor, who is widely remembered as an animated, chatty VJ from her TV show Colours in the early 2000s, is a revelation as the jaded, older version of her character. The first time we see them as a young couple, an annoyed Madhusudhan is taking Lekha from Vizag to Bheemili for a secret abortion, snapping at her on the way, and leaving her alone to undergo the procedure. Even when there’s no dialogue, Swathi effortlessly makes us feel her disappointment, fear, guilt, and a hundred other indescribable emotions. 

“Talk less,” Madhusudhan tells her playfully, only for her to say that all she wants in life is their conversations. Over time, she dims herself for him, until she realises she can only get her shine back by getting away from him. 

Month of Madhu is brilliantly dialogue-heavy. Every line is laden with meaning, conveying so much about the characters’ attitudes and relationships. The film may seem very slice-of-life, but it brims with drama, traversing romance, marriage, teen angst, women’s sex lives, and flawed masculinity, with a lot of refinement.  

Although the story is mainly told through Lekha and Madhu’s lens, it also delves into Madhusudhan’s pain. It shows us his inadequacies from close quarters without judgement – like we’re bystanders who get why he’s spiralling, wishing he’d find his feet before it’s late. Some of the scenes that seem familiar and celebrated in other films when justified from the man’s perspective, take on a nuanced tone here – like when Madhusudhan tells Lekha he only yells at her because he loves her. Madhusudhan could have been like Vijay Deverakonda’s raging, audacious Arjun Reddy in his youth, but his middle-aged version is miserable and emotionally stunted, after years of refusing to really listen to his wife, to see her, to empathise with her. 

Madhu too isn’t perfect, and the film treats her with the acceptance that a 19-year-old merits. Shreya Navile, an Indian-American actor, is cast perfectly as the misplaced NRI. Together with Rajeev Dharavath’s cinematography and Ravikanth Perepu’s editing, Srikanth’s writing flows back and forth in time with ease. 

The peripheral characters are also played by really good actors, and each of them stays with you – Gnaneswari Kandregula as a withdrawn yoga instructor, Raja Chembolu as Lekha’s ambivalently supportive brother, Kancharapalem Kishore as Lekha’s diffident colleague.

Amidst all of this though, Madhu’s difficult relationship with her mother stands out as over-simplistic. What could have been a great mother-daughter love story like Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird, gets compacted, further flattened by Manjula Ghattamaneni’s portrayal. 

Nonetheless, Month of Madhu brings some delightful women to Telugu cinema – their desire for love, fun, self-fulfillment, sex, and everything else coming alive with a sensitive warmth.