Peruvazhiyampalam (1979)

Set in a village, Raman (Ashok) is a rather simple boy living with his sister. The villainous bully, rapist and ex-con Prabhakaran Pillai (Aziz), a married man with children, covets the sister and persecutes Raman who, alone, stands up to the bully and kills him in a knife fight. He has to hide from the police and from the villagers, with the help of a teashop owner (Gopi) and a prostitute, Devayani (Lalitha), who thus express their hatred for the bully they did not dare confront themselves. It emerges that the villain enjoyed a grudging respect for his ‘macho’ qualities: by killing him, Raman has become the one who is both respected and feared. In the end, Raman is struck with remorse when faced by the children of the man he killed. The novelist Padmarajan’s feature has a taut script in which women are expected to pay the price for demonstrations as well as critical examinations of manliness.