No country for Ashley?<\/p>\n
At the heart of BKU is Ashley (Mamitha Baiju), a sensitive college-going girl from a family of precarious means. Her family\u2019s circumstances force them to shift into a tight-knit Christian neighbourhood in a new town. For Ashley, it entails leaving her friends, her band, and her familiar world behind. Notwithstanding the agonizing transition, she falls for her much older neighbour, Justin (Nivin Pauly), who is the go-to chetta of the community, amiable and helpful but equally reluctant and set in his ways after an early romantic tragedy. Like most of AD\u2019s films, BKU\u2019s world is finely detailed, characters are exquisitely sketched and minor everyday moments achieve a novelistic transcendence. Ashley too is very much an extension of the director\u2019s previous women of brio, whether its Keerthi of Thanneer Mathan Dinangal (2019), Sharanya of Super Sharanya<\/a> (2022) or Reenu of Premalu.<\/p>\n The empathetic portrayal of those who make up the world of BKU has now become a signature of Girish AD who has written or been the primary writer of all of his films except I am Kathalan (2022). Here we have a highly integrated Christian settlement of varying social positions, their church life, college affairs, small businesses, artistic aspirations and community events. Characters are complex, and depending on their age, rebellious and traditional to varying degrees. But beyond this, through the unlikely relationship of Ashley and Justin, we get to see how such a community can become claustrophobic in matters that fall outside social sanction. The disturbance caused by the couple\u2019s defiance is two-pronged in BKU, the dominant scandal being that Justin is at least fifteen years older than Ashley, while the more hushed blasphemy is that an upstart working class girl is attempting to \u2018marry up\u2019.<\/p>\n A girl like Ashley is afforded a few things in communist Kerala. A good education is one of them, complimented presumably by early exposure to music and dance through the church choir and other cultural activities. Ashley is musically gifted, spends hours on her guitar, knows lyrics well, and keeps a diary. All of Girish AD\u2019s leads are afforded an interiority but it is particularly expansive when it comes to Christian characters as also evidenced in Jaison (Matthew Thomas) of Thanneer Mathan Dinangal<\/a> (2019), one of the most consummate renderings of a high-school boy\u2019s life in a government school. One possible explanation lies in the importance accorded within Christian tradition to Bible reading, storytelling and relatively egalitarian ideals of spiritual participation.<\/p>\n Ashley is resourceful, and her sharp wit and gumption can be attributed, at least in part, to growing up amid parental conflict and economic uncertainty. As an outsider to the BKU community, Ashley is far less encumbered by their unspoken rules. We see her almost amused by Justin\u2019s paranoia about others finding out about their relationship, even though it\u2019s ultimately Ashley\u2019s meddlesome uncle, Alex (Vinay Forrt), who makes her life miserable. But what really stayed with me is how even after they overcame their families and hesitations, Ashley can only imagine a future with Justin in Ireland, the country where she is employed, and not in the very community that has come around to accepting them. In order to understand why, a detour through the portrayal of men in BKU is first warranted.<\/p>\n Girish AD\u2019s men<\/p>\n For all purposes, barring his bachelor status, Justin is a model citizen. He runs a catering business, is the local handyman, the scrappy producer of his younger brother\u2019s short films, takes care of his family and friends. But all these admirable qualities also become fetters when it comes to the freedom to love. This is shown sharply in the supermarket scene, where he plans a clandestine meeting with Ashley because it is a safe, neutral space where they are less likely to be spotted. In his hyper-alertness, he jumps at the sight of the CCTV camera in the shop, a brilliant metaphor for the pervasive surveillance of life in an insular non-urban society.<\/p>\n Also Check: In \u2018Lokah,\u2019 Malayalam Cinema Finally Lets a Woman Wear the Cape<\/a><\/p>\n In establishing the BKU community, there is no doubt that more male characters are sketched in depth in comparison to the women. But rarely do we see male fragility and powerlessness explored so thoroughly as in Girish AD\u2019s films. Imposing male figures suffer break downs either emotionally or often through farcical violence that lays bare the absurd contradictions of their chest thumping. Justin\u2019s attempts to assert superiority by virtue of his age are repeatedly put in their place by Ashley\u2019s witty repartee and sarcasm. His younger brother Joel (Sangeeth Prathap), after multiple beatings from his girlfriend\u2019s brother Hari (Shyam Mohan), comes to see through the logic of patriarchal chetta culture and its condoning of violence through \u201csetting\u201d and \u201ccompromise\u201d. Joel ultimately defies Justin when he decides to handle such attacks the modern way \u2013 through the law.<\/p>\n Hari may be a respected Theyyam artist, but his aggressive attempts to control his younger sister ultimately end up in the well, where notions of family \u2018honour\u2019 and \u2018dignity\u2019 that wreak such havoc on women\u2019s autonomy, truly belong. Alex, the self-appointed decider of his niece Ashley\u2019s fate, in a pleasing twist, inadvertently receives some of his choicest beatings from his fellow patriarch Hari. The uncle\u2019s indifference to Ashley\u2019s wishes, and his bravado in committing her to a nunnery, are exposed as beggarly and petty. Violence in the film, as in Super Sharanya and Premalu, takes on a comic slapstick form. The obstinacy and arrogance of patriarchal figures repeatedly come undone in hilarious ways when confronted with the feminine challenge of falling in love and dealing with its transformational effects.<\/p>\n Perhaps the majority of the male commentators, emphasizing the warmth of the film, are speaking from that part of themselves that the film makes space for \u2013 a softer masculine side that fails and bumbles, that grapples with fear and humiliation. BKU has the interesting quality of depicting all of these experiences without running down masculinity whose dependable and attractive qualities are often glossed over. In the brutal world of adult hustle, Girish AD has carved a space for men to see themselves as the lacking beings that they are without stripping them of their consolations.<\/p>\n Modernity and patriarchy: Is change possible? When considering the older romantic couplings in Girish AD\u2019s films \u2013 Jaison & Keerthi in Thanneer Mathan Dinangal, Deepu & Sharanya in Super Sharanya, and Sachin and Reenu in Premalu<\/a> \u2013 the endings were far neater. There was a sense of comforting resolution after the maddening ups and downs of a love that upsets much of what one holds dear. The question of wider familial acceptance was secondary to the couple\u2019s own struggle with real-world consequences of their desires. But BKU deals with a more mature pairing, where social consequences are no longer an afterthought but an integral part of the relationship itself. It is in this context that the film seems to signal a fundamental incompatibility when it comes to Ashley\u2019s aspirations. On the one hand there is the need for financial autonomy combined with her own expectations of marital parity and, on the other, the demands of community acceptance and integration.<\/p>\n As Ashley and Justin reunite, it\u2019s clear that she has no intention of giving up her own pursuits, for which she seems to see little possibility in an otherwise loving community. She defies her mother too, but without abandoning her familial responsibilities. In this aspect the film is reminiscent of Tamil director Vinothraj\u2019s masterful Kottukkaali<\/a> (2024), where Meena\u2019s (Anna Ben) scenario is far more violent and suffocating, but one can still read the same even-keeled refusal in both Meena and Ashley to sacrifice whatever autonomy they have access to. Ashley knows only too well, from watching her desperate mother at the mercy of her husband\u2019s job insecurity, that financial independence is ultimately what gives women a modicum of choice. Her desire for autonomy is grounded in what she has seen dependence do to another woman.<\/p>\n Will it work out between Ashley and the much older Justin? Will he be able to adjust in a foreign land without the net of the Bethlehem family? Girish AD seems considerably more pessimistic about the possibility of change at the level of the community than at the level of the individual. He seems to say that reform is possible, and not just in the case of men. Yes, it is a specific time in our society where women are raring to go and the men are more often than not found fumbling. But it is also the case that older notions of romance persist amongst women. Women like Ashley who fearlessly express attraction to intimidating figures like Justin, or those like Sharanya who initiate a daring kiss at the back of a car, are still the exception.<\/p>\n This is what makes BKU feel so different from a conventional feel-good film. It does not shy away from social contradictions, nor does it expect them to resolve themselves. If anything, Girish AD seems more pessimistic about society than ever. His hope lies instead in the individual: in Ashley\u2019s insistence of autonomy, in Justin\u2019s will to change, and in the possibility that people can become something other than what their social world has prepared them to be. What I saw in BKU, contrary to reviews, was little hope from society, but considerable faith in the individual\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n Read More: Bethlehem Kudumba Unit (2026) Movie Review: A Warm Romance That Needs to Look More Closely at Its Age Gap<\/a>
\n![\"Bethlehem](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790056209_162_Bethlehem-Kudumba-Unit-2026-hof.jpeg\")
Bethlehem Kudumba Unit (2026)<\/p>\n
\nBethlehem Kudumba Unit (2026) Movie Links: IMDb<\/a>, Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>, Wikipedia<\/a>, Letterboxd<\/a>
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