'Super Deluxe' is everything you cannot have imagined by just knowing the title. With Thiagarajan Kumararaja at its helm, I did have high hopes. The writing duties were shared between the director, Mysskin, Nalan Kumaraswamy, and Neelan K. Sekar - all promising names in the industry. The cast featured Vijay Sethupathi (in the role of a transwoman as revealed from the poster), Samantha Akkineni, Fahadh Faasil, Ramya Krishnan, Mysskin, and more. Did they deliver? A colossal YES!
Super Deluxe is 'Pulp Fiction' for Tamil cinema in 2019. There are four different storylines happening parallel to each other, yet somehow connected in ways that you would not see coming. Each frame in the film boasts a colour palette that only someone like Kumararaja can come up with. The opacity is rich and saturated, the costumes match the backdrops well, and the colour tones employed by cinematographers Nirav Shah and P.S Vinod blend with the respective storylines brilliantly.
The screenplay will throw a good number of surprises (and twists) at you. It's too random to be placed into a single genre (or even two, or three!). The undercurrent of black humour is certainly there, but when the emotions take centre-stage, the viewer has no choice but to treat it with the seriousness that it whole-heartedly deserves. The list of whammies include someone dying during sex, a husband/father returning to his household in the most unforeseen way possible, a porn movie that had more than what its teen viewers bargained for, and lastly, the struggles of a wife (of a self-proclaimed godman) whose son has met with an unruly accident.
When it comes to performances, Super Deluxe holds nothing back. If we thought Sethupathi did not have any more challenging roles to do (we last saw him as Ayya in Seethakaathi), here comes yet another cracker of a show by him, conveying the troubles that a transwoman often has to deal with in our world. This has to be Samantha's best performance as yet, where she doesn't play second fiddle to a masala/sappy hero, instead putting forth an extremely layered act. Fahadh Faasil is tremendous as usual, playing the husband who has to deal with his wife's infidelity and the unlikely aftermath that follows. The actors who portray the schoolboys who decide to watch porn at home on a regular working day, certainly show promise.
However, the top honours go to Ashwanth Ashokkumar, the child actor playing the kid excited to meet his dad for the first time. This has got to be one of the most well-written, well-acted child characters in a movie in a very long time. He wants to prove to his friends at school that he's not a 'test-tube baby', and he does not care who or how his father has turned out to be in the meantime. And it is for this reason that the finale of this particular segment felt the most satisfying (and heartwarming at the same time).
Leela's (Ramya Krishnan) segment could have been edited better, but the aesthetics (just look at Arputham's prayer hall and how it has been designed) are impressive. Everything in the movie has been placed to impeccable detail - the police station set, the gangster's house that the boys barge into, the roadside walls (filled with movie posters and a parked lorry with rusted barrels and what-not) and many many more. When it comes to comedy, Mugil's (Fahadh) monologue with his wife's dead lover will surely leave you in splits. Berlin, the cop, has been played with the right amount of nastiness by Bucks.
This isn't your regular commercial potboiler - it's a film with substance, well-rounded characters, tasteful aesthetics, clap-worthy performances, a moving background score (by Yuvan) and subtle philosophy. Watch it with people who appreciate cinema for the flagrant/expressive art-form that it is.
