Same Kitchen, Milder Flavors: Mrs. Gives The Great Indian Kitchen A Pinterest Makeover
The Great Indian Kitchen doesn’t rely on dramatic twists or heavy messaging. Instead, it paints a brutally honest picture of the everyday struggles many women face in Indian households.
Back in 2021, as the world grappled with the pandemic, people adjusted to a new normal, confined within their homes. For those privileged enough to be safe, handheld screens became a source of comfort, and an eager audience embraced an influx of content like never before. Fortunately, regional boundaries and language barriers began to fade, allowing us to explore films and shows we once overlooked—perhaps simply because we hesitated to read beyond the two-centimeter subtitles.
The Great Indian Kitchen: A Masterclass in subtle storytelling
During my daily search for something new to watch, I, like many others, stumbled upon Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen—a film that forever changed my perspective on cinema and feminism. What struck me most was how a male director so brilliantly captured the deeply ingrained patriarchy in everyday life—subtleties even many women have unknowingly normalized.
This Malayalam gem doesn’t rely on dramatic twists or heavy messaging. Instead, it paints a brutally honest picture of the everyday struggles many women face in Indian households. At first, I thought it would be a simple story about a woman managing chores—maybe even a comforting food film. But as it unfolded, I realised it was so much more. Its powerful storytelling left a lasting impact, making it one of the films I strongly recommend to everyone.
In The Great Indian Kitchen, Nimisha Sajayan portrays a dancer whose life takes a turn as she enters an arranged marriage. The film opens with her family preparing for a meeting where a potential groom and his family evaluate the bride. While we get a glimpse into the bride’s home and family, the film deliberately keeps details about Suraj Venjaramoodu’s character—the prospective husband—quite vague. Once the formalities are completed and rituals performed, the new bride steps into her husband’s home, where she is soon absorbed into the unspoken expectations of her role as a wife and daughter-in-law.
Now, four years later, the much-acclaimed story returns in a Hindi remake titled Mrs., now streaming on OTT. While it aims to bring this powerful narrative to a wider Hindi-speaking audience, the question remains—can it match the depth of the original? Remakes often struggle to retain the impact that made the original so unforgettable.
What Works in Sanya Malhotra's Mrs.?
Like The Great Indian Kitchen, Mrs. takes a raw and realistic approach to patriarchy, avoiding unnecessary dramatisation. The Malayalam film stood out for its neutrality—it didn’t force a message but simply laid out the unsettling reality of a married woman’s life, particularly within the kitchen. The Hindi version stays true to Jeo Baby’s vision while adapting it to a North Indian setting. Scenes transition between the kitchen and bedroom, drawing viewers in with visually rich food sequences—only for those same images to feel suffocating by the end. A powerful subplot depicting the regressive treatment of women during menstruation makes the film even more impactful.
Sanya Malhotra delivers a strong performance as a wife struggling under societal expectations, but it doesn’t quite reach the authenticity of Nimisha Sajayan’s portrayal in the original. Nimisha’s character felt universal—one that made you feel like this could be any woman’s story.
What Mrs. Misses
While Mrs. strives to retain the essence of the original, it overlooks a crucial storytelling choice that made The Great Indian Kitchen so impactful—the absence of character names. In Jeo Baby’s film, the nameless character represents every woman, making the story universally resonant. By giving the protagonist a defined identity in Mrs., the film loses some of that immersive relatability.
The remake also makes a few minor tweaks to differentiate itself from a scene-by-scene replication, but not all of them work in its favor. One of the most striking contrasts is how the film handles the Sabarimala subplot. In the original, while the men obsess over purity in preparation for their pilgrimage, they remain indifferent to the women tirelessly maintaining their homes. Mrs. alters this by showing the woman staying away from the kitchen, missing the sharp religious contradiction that made the original so powerful.
In a particularly striking scene, the father-in-law dismisses Nimisha’s desire to apply for a job, insisting that the work women do at home is far more important than that of bureaucrats or ministers. In contrast, Sanya’s character is subtly yet firmly discouraged from attending a job interview when her father-in-law simply states that he isn’t in favor. There’s no argument, no force—yet she finds herself glued to the spot, unable to decide without the patriarch’s approval. In an attempt to normalise women sacrificing their careers for family, he proudly cites his wife as an example—a PhD holder who chose to prioritize her household over her profession.
A softer version of a hard-hitting tale
Beyond the narrative changes that unintentionally dilute the film’s impact, what truly weakens its emotional depth is its overly vibrant visual palette. The original film used muted tones to immerse the audience in the protagonist’s suffocating reality—every frame, from the gloomy rain to the unkempt kitchen, reinforced the monotony and oppression of her daily life. The dull color scheme wasn’t just an aesthetic choice; it was an extension of her colorless existence. In Mrs., however, this visual bleakness is lost. Even as the protagonist becomes consumed by the kitchen, the bright and warm hues soften the harshness of her reality. Instead of intensifying her isolation, the lively colors create a disconnect, making it harder to truly feel the weight of her struggles.
While Mrs. tries its best to serve the same hard-hitting story, it feels like a slightly under-seasoned remake of The Great Indian Kitchen. It keeps the essence but loses the bite, softening the very discomfort that made the original unforgettable. Jeo Baby’s film made you feel the suffocation; this one, with its bright colors, feels like patriarchy with a Pinterest aesthetic. That said, it’s still a worthy watch—especially for those who haven’t seen the original. It may not shake you to the core, but if it gets even one man to rethink his role in the house (or at least pick up his own plate from the dining table), that’s a small victory.
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