Asandhimitta 2018

A film director receives a call from Asandhimitta, who asks him to make a movie about her life story and requests an appointment to tell her tale, setting a premise that frames the entire narrative as a documentary-like inquiry into a single woman’s experiences.

The story unfolds aboard a bus, where Asandhimitta sits beside a young Wickramasekara. He uses suggestive hints to signal his interest in starting a relationship, a moment that foreshadows how their lives will become entangled. After alighting at the same stop, he becomes her paramour, and the plot gradually reveals how Wickramasekara tries to fit himself into the role of a house-husband, suggesting a tension between desire, dependence, and gender expectations that threads through the film.

Asandhimitta works as a ticket collector at a parking lot, where she endures spiteful remarks about her body, described bluntly as weighing 303 lb (137.5 kg). The humiliation and social stigma she faces contribute to a cascade of setbacks: she loses her job and attempts a range of odd jobs, including a stint as an exorcist, though these efforts fail to provide stability. In response to her mounting struggles, she places an advertisement in a newspaper announcing that she intends to start an association for helpless women, signaling a shift toward organizing support and self-advocacy.

The couple visits an apparently wealthy family, including two ladies named Madara and Samadara. Wickramasekara tries to deceive the divorced woman in that family, a move that intensifies the film’s tension and hints at a darker, more manipulative strand in his character. The narrative builds toward a violent climax as Wickramasekara allegedly strangles the women, leaving Asandhimitta implicated as the focus of the police investigation.

Asandhimitta is arrested by the police in connection with the three murders, while the director seeks to locate Wickramasekara alias Wicky with the help of Pradeep, the landlord of Asandhimitta’s residence. A central twist reframes the events: Wickramasekara is revealed to be a hallucination of Asandhimitta, and the two male characters seen in the story are younger and older versions of the same figure, collapsing the distinction between reality and imagination.

The ending juxtaposes two tableaux: the director cutting a birthday cake, a moment of ritual normalcy, and Asandhimitta raised to a noose, with prison officers present to carry out a death penalty. The scene leaves the audience with a stark, unresolved tension about guilt, truth, and the nature of storytelling itself.

The film features performances by Shyam Fernando, Dharmapriya Dias, Anula Bulathsinhala, Gayani Gisanthika, and Sandali Ash.