In addition to the glitz of Bollywood, a more subtle Indian cinema embraces new stories

It is an Indian film without song and dance. The lovers don’t say a word, their main interaction being a fleeting moment of eye contact in the monsoon rain. There are no car chases and no action stunts. The men are vulnerable. They cry.

And yet, when ‘Kaathal – The Core’, a Malayalam film about a closeted middle-aged politician, was released last month, it became both a commercial and critical success. Cinemas in the southern state of Kerala, home to the Malayalam film industry and about 35 million people, were sold out. That one of South India’s biggest stars had taken on the role of a gay man and portrayed him so sensitively sparked conversations far beyond Kerala.

Outside India, the country’s cinema is often equated with the glamor and noise of Bollywood, as the dominant Hindi-language film industry is called. But in this vast country of 1.4 billion people, there are many regional industries whose styles are as different as their languages. ‘Kaathal’ is the latest example of what Malayalam cinema has become known for: progressive stories that are low-budget, nuanced and loaded with real human drama.

What sets the film apart from other regional cinemas, observers say, is that it strikes a rare balance. Audiences in Kerala have become increasingly enthusiastic about these humble Malayalam stories of ordinary people as they are about high-adrenaline blockbusters, often imported from other parts of India.

The result has been commercial success for the kind of low-key films that are seen as experimental elsewhere, more often than not relegated to festival circuits or sent straight to streaming platforms.

“We have a great audience here,” said Jeo Baby, director of “Kaathal”. “The same audience creates success for mass films and at the same time for small films and comedies.”

The subtle storytelling of Malayalam cinema has gained more prominence in the post-Covid era. The rapid expansion of streaming services in India, which started with the pandemic, and competition for new content has created space for regional cinema to find a national and global audience.

Bollywood, for its part, initially struggled to attract audiences back to cinemas post-Covid. The recent high-grossing films are largely based on worn-out storylines, injected with more violence, increasingly slick visual effects and heavy doses of populism and propaganda. Superstars still dominate Bollywood, and an environment of censorship and self-censorship prevails.

“There is a lot more intervention there,” says Swapna Gopinath, professor of film and cultural studies at the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication in the city of Pune. “That makes it difficult for independent cinema to thrive.”

Until recently, Ms Gopinath said, Malayalam cinema was no different: there were films with big-name actors and recycled storylines, often celebrating traditional, patriarchal values.

But that changed about ten years ago multiple groundbreaking movies of young directors had great success. It was an affirmation that audiences in Kerala, which leads India in terms of living standards, were open to experimental, nuanced content.

“From that moment on, the The film landscape has changed as far as Malayalam cinema is concerned,” Ms Gopinath said. “We started making films that talked about gender and caste.”

a study of recent Malayalam films from Ormax Media, a consultancy, found that three-quarters of them were small town dramas whose protagonists were ordinary people, and not larger-than-life heroes. The topics usually are modest and local – like the messy politics of widening a small village road when everyone has a share, or a priest in a new chapel which is haunted by the history of space as a soft porn cinema.

Mr. Baby, who directed ‘Kaathal’, is known for focusing on what often goes unnoticed in everyday life. He first gained widespread recognition two years ago with “The great Indian cuisine”, a meditation on the toll of misogyny on a family.

When the writers of ‘Kaathal’ approached him with their story about the struggle of a closeted gay man, the director said he had only come up with one actor for the role: Mammootty, a 72-year-old star with a large fan following in Kerala.

He plays Mathew Devassy, ​​a retired, married bank teller with a daughter who is in college. As he prepares to contest the village elections, his wife, played by actress Jyotika, files for divorce because he knew throughout their marriage that he was gay and quietly had a male lover. The film contains courtroom scenes, but focuses on the silences in the household, the rumors circulating in the village and Mathew’s inner struggle.

Mammootty’s decision to star as well as produce “Kaathal” has helped keep the film, and the subject it deals with, in the public’s eye, Mr. Baby said.

Just five years ago, India decriminalized gay sex, and the Supreme Court recently rejected a petition to legalize same-sex marriage, although it said same-sex relationships should be respected.

Jijo Kuriakose, an artist and activist in the city of Kochi in Kerala, said “Kaathal” had sensitively dealt with the social pressures that force many gay Indians to lead parallel lives.

He said he almost married a woman about a decade ago, but instead came out to his family on the night of his engagement. His parents still urge him to marry a woman, he said.

“Okay, you are homosexual, we understand that, but marry a woman” – it has been a standard answer for years,” Mr Kuriakose said.

The film has sparked many discussions in Kerala and beyond about how caste, class, gender and religion influence the characters’ choices. Sreelatha Nelluli, a poet and translator who recently left a marriage to a closeted gay man, said the film hit especially close to home.

“I loved your expressions, constantly confused and almost scared.” Mrs. Nelluli wrote to Mammootty and Mr. Baby in an open letter. ‘You have understood and embodied this man.’

But while praising the film for “giving a voice to the voiceless”, Ms Nelluli said it had made the process of coming out quicker and easier than is actually possible. After her husband told her the truth, she said, another 15 years passed before they shared it with the rest of the family.

“When he came out of the closet fifteen years ago, I also came out with him,” she wrote.

For Mr. Kuriakose, this subtle Malayalam film was perhaps too subtle at times. He was disappointed that it never showed the intimacy of the male lovers, and that unlike heterosexual romances in most Indian films, their story had no beginning. At no point in the film do we learn how the two men met.

“Some people really enjoyed the subtle expressions,” Mr Kuriakose said. “Being a loud person, I like to see ‘unsubtle’ expressions.”

Deepa Kurien contributed reporting.