Mrs director Arati Kadav: ‘My next is a sci-fi story with a bit of magic’

Director Arati Kadav on wanting to change the climax of Mrs and how her learning of human emotions from the Sanya Malhotra-starrer will reflect in her next

Sometimes, the lessons learnt on one film tend to influence a director’s next. At first glance, that seemingly doesn’t apply to Mrs director Arati Kadav, who has begun work on her next project. “I’m making a science fiction story,” she reveals. That’s a genre far removed from the Sanya Malhotra-led drama, which revolves around a new bride who challenges the patriarchal norms threatening to suffocate her marriage and identity. But the director insists that regardless of the two different genres, Mrs will deeply influence her yet-untitled story.

Arati Kadav

“I learnt so much about human emotions in Mrs. I will take that into the science fiction film. It will have a lot of human drama because that has to be at the centre of my stories. I enjoyed strong character drama in Mrs. So, it will be a heartfelt sci-fi story, a character drama with a bit of magic,” shares Kadav. This will be her second attempt at the sci-fi genre after Cargo (2019), which marked her feature film debut.

Meanwhile, Mrs (streaming on ZEE5), an adaptation of the Malayalam gem, The Great Indian Kitchen (2021), is receiving wide appreciation. But a section of the audience has also expressed displeasure at how it repeats iconic scenes from the Jeo Baby-directed original, including the climax where the protagonist pours a bucketful of filthy water on her husband, after he neglects her months-long request to have the pipe in the kitchen fixed. “I was not at all in favour of showing the scene flow of a remake. I was constantly trying to deviate from the original. I added the character of Vedprakash because I figured being a doctor family, they would have domestic help,” says Kadav, reflecting on the criticism. 

“I wanted to make changes to the last scene. But Harman [Baweja, producer and co-writer] told me that this film works because of its simple and powerful storytelling, and if we try to make it complicated, its simplicity will be lost. His intention was to make Mrs for the audience who hasn’t seen the original. The idea was not to make the film for only cinema-literate people, but to make it more accessible to the north Indian viewers.” Today, as she looks back on Mrs, how would she have made it differently? “The dominant criticism is that it’s very close to the original. So, I’d work on making it slightly different,” she notes.

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