There are primarily two dominant tropes associated with women in Gopalakrishnan's cinema. One, as we've seen, is food and feeding, which is linked to nurturing and the role of the provider. The other is the doorway against which women are often framed. Both tropes are, of course, not mutually exclusive and often appear in conjunction with one another in the same film. We've already encountered strong nurturing women like Sita, Santhamma, Rajamma and Saroja, who are also identified with the doorway. And then there is the tragic Omana, whose life seems to revolve around it. In Gopalakrishnan's most recent films, Naalu Pennungal (Four Women, 2007) and Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate for Crime, 2008), it is the doorway that tends to assert itself both literally and metaphorically (when it is not invoked visually). This is especially true for the first film, in which women seek voice and visibility within a society that often seeks to silence and marginalize them. The doorway embodies their sense of insecurity, exclusion and otherness.

Although Kerala has had a long history of matrilineal communities run by women, Gopalakrishnan's films are mostly concerned with the aftermath, when such communities have declined and men have gained ascendancy. The woman in the doorway exemplifies this change in status. Standing on the edge of what is often the public space within the house, she is at best a witness to what men discuss and decide. Social convention has taught her to be circumspect in their presence, for it would be deemed unseemly to step forward and join them in their deliberations. Thus she stands, listens and observes. The men, in turn, acknowledge her presence, but always with a certain ambivalence: she is visible and yet invisible, present and yet absent.

Her domain is the space behind and around her—the domestic sphere of kitchen and bedroom—where she is granted a large measure of autonomy as long as it does not conflict with the agendas set by the men.