Despite the appalling circumstances and events it depicts, the movie’s plain and unstinting affection for its lead characters gives Parched a frequently buoyant tone.
Leena Yadav’s Parched is a bright jewel of a film, surprisingly funny, fresh and upbeat in the way it takes on the complicated and often dark topic of sexual politics in rural India. T
75
RogerEbert.com
RogerEbert.com
Parched is a filmmaker’s attempt to understand how and why these women continue to live.
75
The Playlist
The Playlist
It is easy to feel the passion with which Yadav tells the story, and to feel intimately connected with her characters, even in the midst of heavy-handed and almost bloated commentary, which sometimes feels a bit too blatantly thrown in.
Yadav’s concerns about discrimination and violence against women are evident in nearly every scene of the film, as her script positions each of the principal characters to undergo an experience of self-actualization in defiance of prevailing patriarchal norms.
50
Village VoiceSimon Abrams
Village VoiceSimon Abrams
Too bad writer-director Leena Yadav only infrequently uses innuendo-driven sex talk to break up a monotonous series of confrontations between misogynistic alpha males and their unhappy wives.