The story of a college student in love with a man twice her age becomes the highest-grossing Malayalam film of all time. That headline does not adequately capture the magnitude of the success of Bethlehem Kudumba Unit (Bethlehem Family Unit), which is now streaming after storming theatres.
The stand-out aspect of its box-office triumph is that it was achieved without compromising on qualities that have drawn cinephiles across India to middle-of-the-road Malayalam cinema: the ability to entertain with culturally rooted, socio-politically insightful, slice-of-life sagas, slickly produced on modest budgets.
