Cast: Dilip Rayamajhi, Manoj Shrestha, Giri P Sunar, Sonu Ghimire etc.
Direction: Manoj Shrestha
Producer: Giree prasad Sunar

‘Bidhawa’ meaning widow, is a woman whose husband is dead. This Nepali movie depicts the cursed life of a girl (Gaumati) whose husband dies too early, and has to live a painful life as a widowed woman. The movie also features Dilip Raymajhi as Ram Gaire, who arrives at the village to spread the awareness against the discrimination against widowed women.

Single women are the most marginalized and abused sector of the population. Even her own family members abuse her and they are seen as a curse befallen on the family. It is also believed that if a widow marries another man, her deceased husband’s soul goes to hell. Such practice is still found in a lot of villages of Nepal. In ancient times, there used to be ‘Sati’ practice in which if a married man died, the widow is forced to join her husband in his funeral. But, if a wife dies, his husband can marry another girl. So, everything seems to go against woman.

The makers have managed to create a movie which presents a life of a ‘kamini’ woman in Nepal and how her life transforms when her husband dies, but it was far from being a successful movie. Quite a lot of things in the movie looked imbalanced, the script was poor, not so creditable cinematography and I can’t imagine a bad screenplay than this. From the start, it was a disaster. The movie starts as Dilip Raymajhi and Sonu Ghimire being chased by a group of villagers and it never looked natural. On many occasions, the mouth movements were not synced with the voice. Why on earth are we being so lazy to not test the entire movie twice? At few occasions, the background music was too high and irritating and even disturbing the dialogues. For instance, when Gaumati tries to pour the water from the feet of her husband, intending to drink it, they played awkward background music which was displeasing and disturbing the dialogues.

I also didn’t like the idea of repeating events on few occasions, like the marriage scene which was repeated in happy musical song as well as on sad songs. Similarly, when the Gaumati’s husband died, everyone was crying and few scenes were repeated couple of times. It seemed as if the director was out of idea on how to play the screen. One more thing that I was not pleased about was the speech program where Dilip Raymajhi gives his speech. I am not sure why the makers didn’t make any effort to compile a better dialogue for this. And finally, the finishing was a disaster. I was really shocked to see how everything changed so easily and hurriedly.

Thankfully, I loved the dance of Sonu Ghimire. Her moves were astonishing and for me, it was the only thing to cherish about the movie.

Plot:
The movie starts as Ram(Dilip Raymajhi) and Gaumati(Sonu Ghimire) being chased by villagers. Then the movie backtracks to a point when Ram arrives the village with a camera in his hand. Ram came to the village as a representative of ‘Ekal Mahila samaj sewa’ to help the single women of village from discrimination and abuse. But he falls in love with a young widow whose husband died very early. As he gets closer, he knows even more about her.

Watch or Not:
I wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch this movie.