Mohomaya evaluation: Swastika Mukherjee, Ananya Chatterjee starrer is an abomination of a sequence, sleazy and gratuitous in equal measure

Mohomaya, the five-part sequence on Hoichoi, opens with a scene so agonisingly gratuitous that it places the shady popularity of the streaming platform–peddling mushy porn as creatively inert sequence–to disgrace. No phrases can suffice in approximating the horror however let me attempt. A half-naked man indulges in what’s presumably the worst shot BDSM within the historical past of intercourse scenes as a girl, her again turned to him, wears an animal masks. The digitally amplified lashing noise is punctuated by her moaning. I’m assuming at this level somebody from the crew thought there nonetheless remained some ambiguity.
To make his animalistic tendencies utterly clear, the person says issues like: “I am an animal”, and heaps of hay fall within the room on cue. The scene refuses to finish, in fact. His spouse stays tied up on the nook of the room. Turns out that is a part of her grooming, and to make issues abundantly clear (once more) he says issues like: “you have to groan like an animal.”

Mohomaya, directed by Kamaleshwar Mukherjee, tries to be a number of issues — portrait of a lonely home spouse, a commentary on feminine violence and a resuscitation of Freud’s Oedipus idea. But the one factor it achieves with unflinching readability is to be a artistic outrage of aesthetic sensibilities. Across the 35-minute runtime of 5 episodes, two tales unfold concurrently. One consists of an everyday household residing in a palatial type of dwelling however for some cause have solely a Scooty as their solely mode of transport.
The different features a boy, son of the aforementioned animal-like couple, who retains dreaming about his mom and expresses his love by repeatedly tying her up. At some level they intersect and the sequence devolves right into a full-blown show of deranged concepts of affection and obsession: a cat is killed, a lady falls from a flight of stairs like a rag doll, and saris are sniffed like it’s a part of some foreplay. If the premise appears incredulous, they pale earlier than the garish visuals.
But the true testomony of Mohomaya’s ludicrousness stays the way it resists any type of mental engagement; designed like some feverish creative dream it unfolds like a limp nightmare. The sequence, starring Swastika Mukherjee, was touted because the comeback automobile of National-award successful actor Ananya Chatterjee. The solely factor she does, nonetheless, is pile on her son as a ghost asking to be tied and untied like they’re enjoying some nursery recreation. In one of the crucial unsettling scenes, she tries stopping her husband by unhooking her shirt. Her college going son watches them from a distance. Before I may grasp, my wifi stopped working. I’m assuming out of disgust.
(Mohomaya is streaming on Hoichoi)