I Exist is a short film written by Radhika Prasiddha, the actor from Kuttram Kadithal and Kadugu. Radhika and Vivek Raju have co-directed the film. She plays three roles – a child who is molested by her uncle, a young woman in love, a married woman who has been raped.
The married woman is probably the best of the three characters, and the least dull, even though one wishes she wasn’t in a dramatic dark room but in a regular police station where she reports the rape while everyone else go by normally, like how the scene usually is.
Her character is tired but assertive, and will not take nonsensical questions. She is asked her parents’ names, her husband’s name, if she has had sex with him, if he is impotent, and the other questions a woman is asked when she reports rape. She speaks to the camera, and we are the ones asking the questions. She realises in the end that this is of no use, she doesn’t care about us or the enquiry and wants to leave.
The second, younger woman, is walking down a lane after work, drying clothes, dressing up, and telling us about the boy she likes at work. She is waiting for him to ask her out, and as days pass by he asks her out. But it makes no difference to her life or the film. She talks to us like we are her friends, but we’re bored of her. She likes the boy, but wants him to do something about it. When he makes a move, she asks what was his motive behind it. She says they kiss in a car, and she might do it again, but what will her parents say? Disappointed, she goes to bed.
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And then there’s the child, the most troubling character. She is molested by an uncle she is fond of. She knows she doesn’t like it. But she wants to punish herself for not making him come back. She says maybe she did something wrong. But for a child who is molested, and is confused about it, she is shown very carelessly. Radhika says in an interview that the film was intended as an acting exercise for her. Radhika as the child wants you to pity her, but she irks you as an over animated woman playing a child. It leaves you with nothing more than the premise of her confusion, and her bad acting.
The film’s description on YouTube says that it is “brash, rebellious, non-judgemental, confrontational,” but it’s very inadequate. The attempt to show that women exist, and our sexuality exists, shows women as passive people controlled by everyone around. And we don’t know what the control and violence does to the women in the film.
Watch the film here: