Mrs director Arati Kadav talks about remaking The Great Indian Kitchen and why the story needed to be retold in a North Indian setting
Mrs director Arati Kadav with Sanya Malhotra
Arati Kadav remade Malayalam film The Great Indian Kitchen as Mrs with Sanya Malhotra in the lead. The original film directed by Jeo Baby is set in small-town Kerala, while Mrs changes the setting to north India. Any attempt at a remake invites comparisons, and many have opined that The Great Indian Kitchen didn’t need a retelling. Mrs director Arati Kadav spoke to Mid-day about how she modified the same story for the North-Indian audience.
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Did you expect this kind of a response to Mrs post its release on ZEE5?
I was very nervous before the release because it is a feminist, slightly underdog story and also a remake. We had a successful festival run and were hopeful that won’t go completely unnoticed. But the kind of response we are getting now is other-worldly. Never imagined it would connect with audiences so much. So many people are writing their personal stories to me, and I’m feeling a certain sisterhood as well. Even older women are writing to me that you showed very less, during our times they wouldn’t allow us to use a cooker! Another woman said that after marriage she faced a similar thing where the husband thought he has a right over the wife’s body. It’s nice that we could connect at that level and start those conversations.
There’s so much footage of a woman’s regular tasks in the kitchen, did you feel that the audience might get bored?
I was slightly worried about the audience in the north. The Malayali audience is still more open to artistic cinema, but the northern audience might lose interest. So I tried to make every cooking scene slightly different. There was slight use of humor in the beginning, but eventually you have to show the routine and give people the feeling for being trapped. I definitely wanted to make it more accessible, because I felt the target audience would be audience in North India, who are more used to Bollywood content with music, etc. But I didn’t want to Bollywood-ise this film a lot, it had to be grounded in reality.
How was it changing the setting from south to north India?
Someone told me how patriarchy was different in North India from South India, while we were adapting it. But it is a pan-India phenomenon. It’s such a universal thing that women cook and the men sit. We think Kerala is very progressive, but the original film is set in Kerala itself, and north India is actually infamous for this… someone told me we have to make achar and papad also at home, alongside regular food. Also, a lot of women propagate this, there are victims of this victimhood. Somewhere we have to recognize that women are not necessarily born with the ‘cooking’ gene.
Since it is such a pan-India story, why didn’t you release it in theatres?
I wasn’t sure it would resonate at that scale. I was a bit nervous about it, it’s a feminist drama, people might not be open to it. You remake films like Arjun Reddy, the massive, masculine plot-based films. What is the story of this film? A girl gets married and realises this is not what she wants in life and she leaves. It is an unusual story. I wanted people to experience it on the big screen, but ZEE5 has massive reach in the interiors of the country and many women have been able to access it. This magic might not have happened if it was released in theatres.
Since 2024, it’s been a great year for the woman filmmaker, right?
Yes, since Laapata Ladies to this… so good to see a surge of women filmmakers. I am in very good company. I love and admire all of them, Kiran Rao ma’am has always been so encouraging and supportive…
I think the next thing we want to see is a box office success…
Even my goal is that. I want to now make a mainstream film that’s also successful at the box office, that would feel like the real victory.
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