Dadayama is directed by Vasantha Obeysekara and it stars Ravindra Randeniya as Jayanath, Swarna Mallawarachi as Rathnavali, Somi Rathnayake as Jacolis and Iranganie Serasinghe as a brothel owner.
The film revolves around the tragic relationship between Rathnavali and Jayanath. Rathmali is a bright girl who is doing very well in her studies and has received many awards at school. But Rathmali is from a poor family and longs for a better life. Rathmali meets Jayanath during a train journey where Jayanath makes advances to her. Jayanath soon begins courting Rathmali and they enter into a physical relationship with Jayanath promising to marry Rathmali. It is surprising that an intelligent girl such as Rathmali, believes Jayanath’s false promises. Rathmali becomes pregnant by Jayanath after which he reneges on his promise to marry her and abandons her.
Meanwhile, Rathmali’s gives birth to a son and continues to live with her parents. Rathmali’s father Jacolis is very worried about the plight of his daughter as a single mother, and he is very sad because he educated her with the hope that she would become a doctor one day. Rathmali tracks down Jayanath’s where abouts and confronts him. Jayanath tells Rathmali that she should not have taken his promises about marriage seriously but he goes with her to her house to meet her parents and makes another false promise to marry Rathmali in one year after he sits for his Advocate’s exam (which is a blatant lie). Jayanath is in fact a relationship with another woman.
Rathmali becomes pregnant again by Jayanath and when he does not marry her after one year as promised, Rathmali threatens to tell the Principal of the school where he is a teacher and make a complaint against him to the police. Jacolis is furious when he learns that Rathmali is pregnant for the second time and Jayanath has broken his promise and disappeared from the scene. Jacolis breaks the furniture in his house and leaves home after which he becomes seriously ill and is admitted to hospital.
During Jacolis’s absence from home, Jayanath takes two women who pose as his mother and sister (who are in fact a brothel owner and a prostitute) to meet Rathmali’s mother and tells them that he wants to take Rathmali to his house and then make preparations to marry her.
Jayanath takes Rathmali to a house, leaves her there and goes away immediately. Rathmali finds that she has been taken to a brothel and she is raped by a man who pays money to the brothel owner. Rathmali returns home the next day and goes in search of Jayanath and confronts him again.
This time Jayanath keeps Rathmali as a boarder with a person in a slum area until he arranges for a bogus registration of marriage after which he takes Rathmali in his car to a deserted area. Rathmali realises that something strange is happening and Jayanath tells her that the marriage was a fake. Rathmali tries to get out of the car but cannot because Jayanath is driving very fast. Rathmali attacks Jayanath which makes him slow down and she gets out of the car. Jayanath then runs the car into Rathmali and she dies.
The film highlights the plight of Rathmali who is afraid of being ostracised by our conservative society ,because she is a single mother who has given birth to a child out of wedlock and is abandoned by the child’s father.