Just by virtue of it being director Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s
second film, ‘Super Deluxe’ generated a lot of buzz. Add to it that it has
Mysskin, Nalan Kumarasamy, Neelan K. Sekar and Kumararaja himself as writers,
and actors like Vijay Sethupathi and Fahadh Faasil part of the ensemble, and
expectations became sky high. It is great, then, that ‘Super Deluxe’ delivers
on its potential in fine style.
‘Super Deluxe’ consists of multiple storylines – there is
one plot of a group of boys trying to watch a porn movie, and how it leads to
two stories – one where a subgroup of friends have to try and make money
quickly, and the other where one of the friends gets injured and needs to be
hospitalized while his mother (Ramya Krishnan) and father (Mysskin), a
self-proclaimed godman, scramble trying to heal him in their own ways. Another
plot involves Vaembu (Samantha) whose lover dies during the act of lovemaking,
and she now needs to dispose of the body with the help of her husband Mugil
(Fahadh Faasil). Yet another plot tells the story of Manickam aka Shilpa (Vijay
Sethupathi), a transwoman who comes back home and tries to come to terms with
his son Rasukutty (Ashwanth Ashokkumar).
As expected with the calibre of the writers on offer,
perhaps the biggest plus of ‘Super Deluxe’ is its writing. The screenplay is
sharp with full of surprises, and the dialogues are pure gold. Hats off to
Kumararaja for pulling off a seemingly difficult task – getting together four
writers to put their styles into the plots, and seamlessly combining them to
make one final product. The love for the characters and attention to detail
here is clearly evident. The movie is beautifully shot, and is very stylish –
the colours pop, and the camerawork is great. The background music by Yuvan
Shakar Raja works perfectly (look out for the memorable ‘Star Wars’ reference).
The acting here is top notch as well – Vijay Sethupathi is expectedly good in a
difficult role. Bagavathi Perumal as the crooked cop Berlin is the perfect
amount of creepy. Samantha, Ramya Krishnan and the boys do a great job as well.
Mysskin is brilliantly cast as Arputham. But for me, the scene stealers were
Ashwanth Ashokkumar as Rasukutty; and Fahadh Faasil as Mugil – the layers to
his performance are just amazing!
While addressing the cons, I think the movie could have been
shorter – it has been edited very well to seamlessly blend the stories, but the
indulgence is evident. The runtime is quite long, and the movie would have
benefitted from a reduced length, especially in the second half. Also, the
movie may not be very accessible to a wider, mainstream audience – there are
profanities aplenty which would dissuade family audiences, and the movie is
more for the new-gen audiences and may not really be appreciated by the regular
movie goers.
That being said, I count myself as a movie buff,
and I can safely say – I loved ‘Super Deluxe’. There is so much going for it,
and full marks to Thiagarajan Kumararaja and the entire crew for putting
together such a wonderful package. I am excited to see what more Kumararaja has
to offer (hopefully we get something sooner than the 8 years it took between
this movie and ‘Aaranya Kaandam’.)
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