Priya Mani Is Far Superior To The Product

Confession time: I love Priya Mani’s work. Whenever she is part of the cast, she brings a sense of elegance and stillness, a sort of wisdom, dare I say?

Good Wife is a not-so-good adaptation of the American series of the same name where Julianna Margulies played a housewife who must return to her legal practice after her husband is jailed for a sex scandal. While Priya Mani steps into Ms. Margulies’ stilettos with ease, the series remains a bit of a botch-up. As much so as the Hindi version of the same series which starred a listless Kajol.

Director Revathi gets the mood of the original. But there is something awkward about the rest of the cast in the way they respond to the crisis, almost how they are expected to rather than how they actually feel.

Partly, it is the awful dubbing. I saw the series in the dubbed Hindi version. Big mistake. Watch the original Tamil version. It is probably better, although I can’t see how mediocrity can be improved on. A large portion of the series feels weatherworn, lackadaisical, and worse, assembly-line.

While Priya Mani as Tarunika towers over the rest of the cast, the secondary cast seems to be in it for a lark. The two teenagers playing Priya Mani’s children, especially the girl, are unable to convey the baffled trauma of teens caught in the crossfire of their father’s disgrace and their parents’ splintering marriage.

The smirks that Tarunika faces at her workplace also feel borrowed. Is this targeting a product of a judgemental social order, or a mere dramatic device to make us feel sympathetic towards Tarunika? If the latter, then she doesn’t need our sympathy. Tarunika is one helluva strong woman designed to take the blows on the chin.

There is a stand-out sequence wherein Tarunika goes to meet her husband Gunaseelan (Sampath Raj) in jail. He suggests that on her way out, she tell the media persons that his life is in danger inside the prison, as this would enable his bail plea.

“Do you even hear yourself?” she chides her husband.

I wish more of the characters did that. Just heard themselves. The dialogues sound as though they have come off a teleprompter. The actors (watch the lady judge in the sequence where a child abuser is denied bail) appear to be amateurs.

So, like the over-burdened pillar of strength that she plays, how much can Priya Mani bear before the world around her collapses?