Super Deluxe: A profoundly emotive reel saga

Super Deluxe is a bit out of the world movie by Thiagarajan Kumararaja. That it took eight years for Kumararaja to come up with his second movie shows the intensity with which Kumararaja approaches film-making.

His first venture, Aranyakandam, itself won him the national award for the best debut film of a director in 2011.

He has also roped in three directors -- Mysskin, Nalan Kumarasamy, Neelan K Sekar – to script the movie, which has dark hues of human relationships, sexuality and teen sensibilities vying for mind space.

Four situations and many characters -- some connected to each other and some not even remotely linked – unravel the movie that is sure to test the comprehension levels of the viewer.

But characters themselves are profound and situations toe them to the vortex of uneasy realms in life.

Dark humour, intense sexuality and pathetic helplessness are woven into a chain of events that run parallel in the nearly three-hour movie.

The movie unfurls with the machinations of a cheating wife and her aspiring actor husband -- Samantha Akkineni and Fahadh Faasil -- that would push them from trouble to trouble and in the process unveil their chances of bonding.

We are told that the couple apparently didn't have an element of bonding in their marriage, though the reasons listed by both for this border on the a flimsy to naive narrative.

Samantha has taken her character to lofty plains. Fahadh's uncommon ease of acting is on display.

Kumararaja revels in dealing with shock treatment – he shocks the audience as well as his own characters with powerful twists.

Such twists often form a key part of the narrative.

A housewife yearning for the return of her husband and her kith and kin are up to a super deluxe shock treatment -- The husband returns as a feminine character.

Vijay Sethupathy has carried the movie with uncommon intelligence in the acting front, without falling into the trap of emotional drama, but at the same time evoking helplessness associated with the character.

No character other than this feminine portrayal is so intense in the movie, though situations linked to the key players are equally powerful.

Two other characters – an yesteryear actress and her hubby who transforms himself to embark on a shaky spiritual path – also bank on the peculiarity of the situations thrust upon them to make a mark.

Four teens, one of them the son of an yesteryear actress (Ramya Krishnan), form another key link of the narrative that binds all characters and situations in the movie. The negative shades of a wicked cop are portrayed with finesse by Bagavathi Perumal.

Music by Yuvan Shankar Raja is sublime as well as savage as the situation demands.

There is a peculiar tone employed by the filmmakers and that stands apart – it also gels with the wavering mood of the intense canvas which Kumararaja unfurls to the audience.

And through this, he unravels his powerful characters and eerie situations.

The movie is at once quirky and imposing.

It at times wanders through the borderline of magical realism, which could take Super Deluxe far away from the lay audiences sensibilities.

The filmmakers have not cared to bother much about box office. Instead, they have given characters a fierce aura.

Super Deluxe is not meant for pedestrian viewing. Its space is in a different realm.

Just a thought: If the film makers had attempted to slash the length of the movie by at least 15 minutes, this would have been much more compact reel saga.