Toxic teaser still (L), Geetu Mohandas 
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Geetu Mohandas faces flak for sexual intimacy in Toxic teaser

The filmmaker's past stance against misogyny and female objectification are being called out by netizens

Cinema Express Desk

Netizens have a tendency to go back on your past comments in a way that can be unforgiving. Take Toxic filmmaker Geetu Mohandas, for example. Following the release of the Toxic teaser, featuring Yash, the filmmaker has been getting a lot of praise and some criticism, with excerpts from her old interviews starting to resurface online. For the uninitiated, the teaser for Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups shows Yash's character having sex with a woman next to a cemetery and then entering the burial place with a gun. Before everyone realises, Yash's character Raya turns it into an even bigger burial place by causing an explosion, soon after having sex, and open firing at everyone there.

After the teaser, netizens are bringing back a clip from an old interview where Geetu told Maneesh Narayanan about the portrayal of romance onscreen. In the interview, Geetu suggested that filmmakers have the additional responsibility to show a romantic relationship onscreen in a way that makes family audiences comfortable about viewing it. According to unforgiving netizens, Toxic goes against the filmmaker's own perspective about the depiction of male-female relationships onscreen.

Geetu is also facing backlash for her past stance against objectification of women in Malayalam cinema, especially in reference to the depiction of a scene in Mammootty's Kasaba. At the time, Geetu and Parvathy Thiruvothu took exception to the said scene where Mammootty's character treats a female police officer in a way that tarnishes her dignity. While Parvathy and Geetu's stance about the misogynistic undertones in Kasaba might be valid, netizens and their whataboutery come back to haunt them now and then.

This is to say, the backlash is not new for Geetu, as Kasaba director Nithin Renji Panicker himself took a jab at her after the Toxic makers dropped a special peek on Yash's 39th birthday. Nithin accused Geetu of hypocrisy, of doing something she herself criticised once his film of portraying.

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