Malayalam cinema is filled with crime dramas. There are Kishkindha Kaandam, Sookshma Darshini, Anweshippin Kandethum, Golam, Ozler, and Thalavan, all of which came out just this year. Bougainvillea, Amal Neerad’s new film, is the story of a painter who gets embroiled in a case involving several missing women. Whether or not she is the culprit is what the investigation thriller is all about.
Spoilers Ahead
Was Reethu suffering from amnesia?
Bougainvillea began with Dr. Royce Thomas and his wife, Reethu, meeting with a car accident. The couple suffered injuries, but Reethu was the one who was more deeply affected by it. Eight years later, Reethu and Dr. Royce now lived in Kuttikanam, and she took care of their children Ryan and Emma. Reethu was a painter who only painted Bougainvillea flowers, which eventually began to bother her. She had a maid named Rema by her side at all times who took her to one specific gallery that purchased Reethu’s paintings. It was revealed that Dr. Royce was buying his wife’s paintings and putting them away at his ancestral home. Dr. Royce always took her for a shower in the bathtub in their washroom in case Reethu had a breakdown, but she always came out coughing and disoriented. The couple had also put up CCTV cameras in their living room and outside their main door. During one of her manic episodes, Royce ended up slapping her to calm her down. However, their life in Kuttikanam was simple, and Dr. Royce had a reputation as a good doctor in his hospital as well.
Why did David Koshy suspect Reethu?
David Koshy, Assistant Commissioner of Police of Thenali in Tamil Nadu, paid a visit to Royce and Reethu’s home in regards to the disappearance of a college girl named Chhaya Karthikeyan from Kuttikanam. Chhaya was the daughter of a powerful politician, and David was under pressure to crack the case. On being questioned about Chhaya’s disappearance by David, Reethu claimed to have seen something about the girl on the news. Royce had to inform David about her amnesia that was a result of an accident that had happened eight years ago. The ACP, David Koshy, however, asked him to bring Reethu to the police club for questioning along with her medical reports.
Reethu, as planned, was questioned again about her presence near the hostel Chhaya lived in, as seen in the CCTV footage gathered by the police. Reethu could hardly remember anything and she initially pointed her fingers at Rema, her house help. Rema confirmed her alibi, claiming that she and her husband were out of town at the time. A confused Reethu, who had trouble remembering events and faces, later claimed that it probably had been her, but she does have some memory of visiting the place.
Reethu lets David know that she receives flashes of memories about being drowned in water. Dr. Royce believes this could be related to her childhood trauma. The police felt Reethu was purposely misleading them, and they were getting frustrated with her vague answers. Dr. Royce had to step in several times to remind them that Reethu only remembers the faces of people she sees every day, which includes him, Rema, and Rema’s husband Biju. Dr. Royce also added that Reethu had created a world for herself, and it was hard for anyone outside of her small circle to penetrate it. He also revealed that Reethu and he do not have kids, and Emma and Ryan were figments of her imagination, the biggest side effect of the trauma caused by the car accident.
What did Meera find out?
Since David and his subordinate were unable to make a breakthrough because of Reethu’s amnesia, they brought in Meera, a renowned criminologist with the Kerala police who lived in Kuttikanam as well. Meera and David visited the hospital Reethu was sent to if she ever became violent. The place was run by Dr. Manu Philip, who gave them a tour of the room she was generally placed in. From the window of the room Meera spotted bougainvillea. They didn’t get much of a lead from the hospital visit, and around the same time, two more girls went missing. Royce and Reethu, however, were seen coming back home in the middle of the night. Reethu was seen drenched, and it was unclear what was going on. Meera and David decided to take Reethu to the places the girls went missing from and other spots she frequented too. The case was reaching a dead end as the police could not find any evidence other than the CCTV footage to prove that Reethu was the culprit.Â
Did Meera suspect Royce?
Meera also visited the gallery Reethu frequented in the hope of finding out who was buying her paintings. The owner, out of fear, revealed that the paintings were bought by Royce himself. A surprised Meera wanted to ask Royce about these purchases and she went over to Royce’s ancestral home to discuss the same. Meera was shocked to find all of Reethu’s bougainvillea paintings on the wall of a room in the ancestral home. From the window of the room she again spotted bougainvillea. Meera was disturbed by the aura of Royce’s ancestral home and left with some doubts. She suspected Royce was behind the disappearances of the young girls.
Did Meera disappear?
Reethu had a habit of placing small chits below her mattress, and ever since the investigation started, she found many with her handwriting that stated that she knew Chhaya Karthikeyan. The latest note was found by Royce, and it stated that Meera had visited her and said her children do not exist. The fact that Royce found the note and threw it away indicated that he could be the killer and was playing the long game. Reethu, however, found a note that stated that Meera would take her to the farmhouse. The note was clearly left by Royce to mislead his wife. It was jarring that Reethu did not notice that the handwriting in the note was not hers. This should have tipped Reethu off that she was being manipulated.
Reethu believed the note, but only a while later, David arrived to let her know that Meera was missing as well. On checking their CCTV footage, it was deduced that Meera was last seen leaving Reethu’s home. David could have arrested her based on this evidence, but somehow chose not to, which was odd. Reethu was panicking and having a hard time remembering anything around her. Since she knew Royce was at his ancestral home, she asked Rema and Biju to drop her there. On the way, she stopped by Meera’s home, and Rema let her know she had come down to the gate to meet someone and had disappeared ever since. It was odd that Reethu knew where Meera’s home was since she had never been there before.
Who was the serial killer?
On reaching Royce’s ancestral home, Reethu and Rema were locked into a room by him, and he killed Biju. This move revealed that Royce was the serial killer, and he got rid of Boju since he could be a potential eyewitness that would end his killing spree. Rema was also knocked down by Royce for the same reason. It was revealed that Royce dunked Reethu’s face in the bathtub filled with water at night as he learned she would forget everything nefarious he carried out and work based on his instructions if he did so. His instructions included helping him kidnap the women, but the rest of the murderous activities were done by him.
The couple did the same to Meera; that’s how Reethu knew the criminologist’s home. Royce got rid of the human remains by feeding the butchered bodies of the women to the pigs and hunting dogs he was raising. Royce had to make sure he got rid of everything that could implicate him since he could not rely on Reethu’s amnesia to save him. Since he was a doctor and Reethu’s husband, he was aware of her trigger points, which helped him carry out the murders.
Royce was physically abusive, manipulative, and gaslighting his wife so that no one would suspect him to be the killer. Since she used to forget events and faces, dunking her face in a tub full of water made his job easier. This could be connected to Reethu’s memory of drowning she mentioned to David during the interrogation. Royce was the very definition of a psychopath, and there was a history behind that. As a child, he was a witness to his grandfather raping young women and killing them. Royce was an example of a generation that did not learn to respect women since he believed he could get away with it. Royce genuinely believed in taking in women without their consent and murdering them mercilessly. He kept everything that belonged to the women with him as a souvenir, a classic sign of a psychopathic serial killer. He could be borderline narcissistic as well since he had a different face out there, but behind closed doors he was a beast.
Royce placed Reethu in the room that had her paintings, and he set it on fire. It could be assumed that he purchased all the bougainvillea paintings to avoid any suspicion being thrown at both of them. He burnt it up as a way to scare Reethu so that she would remain in fear of him and listen to his instructions. Royce took Reethu to the attic where he had murdered the three women. He had now placed Meera on the table as he was ready to murder her as well. He also brought in Rema’s unconscious body to prove that he was capable of anything from that point on.
Reethu stabbed the injection that was meant to sedate her into his leg in retaliation. This was the point at which Reethu understood her world was a lie, and Royce was responsible for that. As Meera attacked Royce, hoping one of them would kill the other, Reethu picked up her husband’s rifle with intent to kill. Royce began to manipulate her again, stating that Meera was a psychopath trying to kill them and the children. This was a last attempt from Royce’s side to get control of Reethu’s mind. Since she remembered that Meera had told her about her children not existing, Reethu at this point pulled the trigger and shot her husband, stating the same. Royce may have lied to the police about Reethu hallucinating the children, and at the same time, he may have manipulated his wife into believing they have children so that he could control her mind. As Reethu shot her husband, Rema attacked him as well, and he fell unconscious.
Bougainvillea ended with David apologizing to Meera for being incompetent. He felt guilty about the fact that they were fixating on Reethu but forgot to look into Royce, who came across as a husband trying to protect his wife. Since Reethu was a key figure in the kidnappings, Royce wanted her around. However he put up a facade of protecting her in the hope the police would not suspect him. Royce was a genius serial killer who created a world that everyone believed in, including the police and Reethu. It was Meera who found something odd about the ancestral home that Royce held on to. David had killed thirteen women, and Reethu was the only one he did not kill. The last sucker punch was David revealing that Reethu’s real name was Esther Emmanuel. David let them know that there was a possibility that the story of the crash that led to Esther’s amnesia was most likely fabricated. Royce may have injured Esther, which affected her memories, and soon fed her the stories of the accident to make her believe that the crash was the cause of her amnesia.
The ending shot of Bougainvillea had Esther visiting Dr. Royce, who was serving a life sentence. The visit was just to remind him that she would not forget and forgive him ever. Royce used to ask her to pray to God before going to sleep, and she asked him to do the same since he would be spending the rest of his life rotting in prison for the horrific crimes he committed.
