Kontrabida Academy is one of those films that, until the very end, is not able to decide if it wants to make a statement, if it wants to weave a fantasy drama, or if it wants to delve deep into the complexities of personal relationships. As a result, we end up with a botched narrative that, despite its potential, is neither entertaining nor moving. So let’s find out what happened in Kontrabida Academy and if the protagonist was able to overcome the conflicts that came her way.
Spoiler Alert
How did Gigi’s life fall apart?
Gigi lived in a small apartment with her siblings and her mother. Her father was apparently working in Bahrain to provide for the family. But whatever money he sent, Gigi’s mother spent on herself, buying useless knock-off items that she later unboxed and posted contents about it on her social media page. Gigi had a boyfriend too, named Abet, and though things were not great between them, she hoped that one day she would get married and settle down with him. By “not great” here, I mean that they had stopped feeling the way they used to for one another. They didn’t fight, and they didn’t tell each other anything, but slowly they were drifting apart. Gigi toiled hard the entire day, and still nothing seemed to be going her way. She worked at a Korean barbeque cafe, where her boss made her work multiple shifts, and she was just sick and tired of everything. She couldn’t leave her job because she knew that with her mother being so reckless, she needed the money to support her family and her own expenses. Still, she was able to maintain her calm as she was hopeful that one day things would fall into place, but then one day she saw her boyfriend with another girl, and she realized that he had been cheating on her.
Abet didn’t have the courage to come up to her and tell her that he wanted to end their relationship. So, like a coward, he went behind her back and did whatever he wanted to. She came back home to find out that the loan sharks had thrown eggs at their doorstep and told her mother that they would ramp things up if she didn’t return their money. The only good thing that happened amidst all the chaos was that Gigi won a hamper at the end of the really sad Christmas party organized at her office. One of the sponsors of the cafe had sent a huge TV, and her name came up in the lucky draw. She took the TV home, switched it on, and that’s when something strange happened to her. A show named Law of the Oppressed started playing, which had some really over-the-top characters in it. One of the vamps in the show, Mauricia, suddenly (breaking the fourth wall) started talking to her. She offered her to be a part of the soap opera world and enter through the television set. Gigi got spooked as she didn’t understand how that could have happened. But then, after her boyfriend left her, and things really got messed up in her personal life, she got so upset that she entered her television set.
What happened with Gigi in the TV world?
The TV world was different from the real world, and the people from the latter were never cast for the shows. This was the first time the main villain of the show, Mauricia, felt like placing her bets on somebody who was not from their world. She told Gigi that there were two kinds of people in the soap opera world: heroes and villains, no one intersected the grey area of the spectrum and their jobs were very clear-cut. They had to play their part so that the balance of the TV world was maintained and the sponsors were happy. Gigi got admitted into Kontrabida Academy, a place where people were taught how to be villains. There were history classes where they were taught how to dig up dirt on a person and then use it against them; in arts classes they were taught how to look the part; in physical training they were made to learn moves that would hurt their opponent, the protagonist the most; also, they were taught how to break a person, gaslight them, and make them feel extremely bad about themselves through words. Gigi’s name was changed to Gia because apparently every great villain’s name ended with “ah.” Gigi applied the tactics she learned in the real world, too. She confronted Abet and his new girlfriend and humiliated them in public, flaunting her recently attained wealth. She confronted her mother and made her destroy all her credit cards and even took her phone so that she was not able to post those awful contents on social media. She found that her boss was embezzling funds from the company, and she reported him to the owners. Gigi became the new manager of the cafe, and she realized that being a villain was much more beneficial than being soft-spoken, polite, and humble in life.
Why did Gigi decide not to be a villain?
In the television show The Law of the Oppressed, Mauricia played the role of a rich man’s wife who tortured her stepdaughter, Mirinisa. At times, Gigi was asked to hit the stepdaughter, and she just couldn’t raise her hand and assault her. Mauricia warned her that people who broke the code of conduct, i.e., who didn’t follow the norms, didn’t play their part, or meddled with the extras on set, were exiled to the island of the forgotten as she did to her on screen daughter Mimi, who fell in love with an ‘extra’. Gigi couldn’t have asked for more out of her life, but there was a part of her that didn’t like who she had become. At times, she treated others very politely, and that really angered her screen mother, Mauricia. Then, one time, one of the actors of the show, named Arnaldo, came into the real world, using Gigi’s television set as a travel portal. He had realized that Gigi was not the villain that she pretended to be, and he also wanted to roam around in the real world with her. After spending some quality time with Arnaldo, she realized that a villain need not be cruel all the time. Also, she felt that people are not as black and white as the characters of that TV show. There was always some good even in an evil person and vice versa. She, together with the extras who weren’t given any lines in the show, protested and came to the decision that they needed to change the storyline. Mauricia was livid at the extras having the audacity to speak in front of her. Extras were considered to be abominations, the actors who couldn’t make it big, and so now were just a part of the background. Mauricia went to the sponsors and complained about what was happening in the show. The sponsors were prudent enough to hear out the grievances of their cast. They were quite surprised when the extras gave some interesting subjects on new stories they could tell, and how the entire system could be refurbished. They agreed to make such shows, and in fact, they put four extras, who had proposed the subjects, in charge of the entire process to help the team with the pre-production.
In Kontrabida Academy’s ending, Gigi came back to the real world, and Arnaldo came with her. They both started living together, and the entire experience taught Gigi that forgiveness is the greatest power one could wield. She realized that vengeance robs one of happiness, and life is too short to hold grudges against anybody. Mauricia ended up in a solo show where she was made to do all the daily chores that she once Mirinisa was forced to do.
