Director: Thiagarajan Kumararaja
Story: Thiagarajan Kumararaja
Cast: Vijay Sethupathi, Fahadh Faasil, Samantha Akkineni, Ramya Krishnan
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Time: 176 minutes
Bottom-line: Grips you in the first half, loses all control in the second
Being heavily awed by Kumararaja’s Aaranya Kaandam, I just had to watch his next film (after an eight-year gap!), Super Deluxe. Featuring an ensemble cast with Vijay Sethupathi, Fahadh Faasil, Samantha Akkineni and Ramya Krishnan in the lead roles, and Mysskin, Gayathrie and Bagavathi Perumal in the supporting roles, this anthology tale is the best example of “What if Quentin Tarantino directed a Tamil film?”
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| Sethupathi as Shilpa (recognise him?) |
The first story is about a strained marriage between Mugil (Faasil) and Vaembu (Samantha). When her ex-boyfriend comes home, they have sex, during which her ex dies. The other problem: someone has seen the corpse. How do the couple dispose of the body while confronting their own differences and conflicts? The second tale is about Jyothi (Gayathrie) and her son, Rasakutty, who have been waiting several years for Jyothi's husband to return. When he finally does arrive, he has transformed himself into a transwoman, Shilpa (Sethupathi). How do his wife and son, and more importantly, society, respond to his change? The third track revolves around five teens, who decide to watch a porno, only to find out that the actress is one boy's (Soori) mother, Leela (Ramya). An enraged Soori goes to kill his mother, but he stabs himself by accident. How does Leela try to save her son, while also convincing her overly-devotional husband, Arputham (Mysskin), to help?
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| Samantha as Vaembu and Faasil as Mugil |
The film has all the strengths and weaknesses of a Tarantino film: dark humour, quirky characters, sharp dialogue, homages, surprising (and often funny) plot twists, and at the same time, excessive dialogue, swear words, noise and way too much screen time. The film is given an adult rating for its content, and rightly so. Even though nothing is explicitly shown, a lot of topics discussed in the film are considered taboo, the most striking one being the character of Shilpa. Sethupathi has done a simply outstanding job in portraying a transgender in the most honest way possible. Some of his lines are worth reflecting on: “Just like how we sometimes wear the slippers on the wrong foot, God made me a man by mistake,” and also, “We cut nails and our hair, so why I can’t I change my body like this?” Ramya Krishnan’s role as Leela is arguably her boldest and most emotional role till date. The Samantha-Faasil couple has also done really well, but I felt a good bit of crying could have been reduced for the former's character.
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| Ramya Krishnan as Leela |
All the subplots move at a rapid pace and the intermission is placed at the right time. However, the second half of the film digresses too much into philosophy, too suddenly. The Samantha-Faasil track has all its ends tied up but the other tracks become too weird. Almost all the humour is brilliantly written, and the subtle homages are nicely incorporated into the script. There are many similarities between this film and Aaranya Kaandam too, in terms of story, characters and many of Kumararaja’s elements. Both have a lover couple, a father-son duo, and a gang (gangsters in AK, teenagers in SD); while the main theme of AK was various depictions of male impotence, the stories in SD all revolve around sex. There are references to other films too, some more obvious than the rest. I also liked how Kumararaja sets his scenes such that there is some music playing which cleverly depicts the scenario (or "situation song" as it is called).
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| The gang of boys |
I guess Super Deluxe is one such film where things are so quirky that it appeals. I feel a lot of scenes are there just for the sake of humour and don't add to the main story, and several sequences have very lengthy build-ups. Nevertheless, the acting performances of almost all actors are commendable, and of course, for a Tamil film, this is indeed a bold attempt to create a different kind of movie.
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