Bait and switch

During the burgeoning UK punk rock scene in the 1980s, a term called “neck mohawk” started gaining currency to describe the sensation of the hair standing up on the back of one’s neck owing to the brilliant music. I got myself a neck mohawk during the three-hour duration of Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s fabulously deranged Super Deluxe.

How does one go about describing the plot of something so disgustingly clever that Indian cinema might not witness it again in the foreseeable future? The movie opens with a man dying midway through a sexual act and what follows are four irresistible stories running parallel. 

It took Kumararaja eight long years to follow up his much-feted debut feature Aaranya Kaandam, but he gloriously brushes off the sophomore jinx. There’s a story about a bickering couple (Samantha and Fahadh Faasil) finally growing fond of each other while they are busy dumping the body of the woman’s lover. We also have a seven-year-old boy who doesn’t mind a bit that his long-gone father (Vijay Sethupathi) has returned as a transgender. There’s an amoral policeman (Bagavathi Perumal) who is more concerned about his bodily needs than serving justice. Three teenagers are on a wild goose chase to stump up enough money to replace a television that they accidentally broke while watching a pornographic video. A small-time godman (Mysskin) refuses to let his seriously injured son get conventional treatment despite numerous protestations by his wife (Ramya Krishnan). Welcome to this tangy, sexy inferno set somewhere in Tamil Nadu that you never want to let go of. 

Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe

 

The eye-blowing cinematography by ace lensmen P S Vinod and Nirav Shah made me think of Super Deluxe not as a film but as a series of paintings that talk to each other, raptly and quietly. Each frame looks brilliantly crafted with colours oozing out like Arnold Böcklin’s fevered dreams. The incandescence of the mise-en-scène is to be seen to be believed, thanks to the Kubrickian inventiveness that Kumararaja brings to the camera movement and image-making. Yuvan Shankar Raja’s frenetic music, aided by evergreen hits of Bappi Lahiri and Ilaiyaraaja, adds more verve to this cinematic phenomenon. 

What makes the movie unique is the laugh-out-loud moments it is leavened with. A small-time gangster, called Idi Amin, asks the teenagers what kind of movies they watch in order to make sure they can carry off a murder. There’s a hilarious bit where the teenagers go to a video store trying to procure a sleazy video from the woman manning the store. 

Acting wise, Kumararaja assembled an Avengers-like cast with the who’s who of South Indian cinema. Sethupathi is scintillatingly convincing as a man who feels he’s trapped in a woman’s body. There’s a seemingly uncomfortable long take when Sethupathi is expertly tying the sari in front of his wife (Gayathrie) who is somehow keeping her emotions under control. The part where the police officer forces him into sex is heart-rending and makes one wonder if this movie would have ever seen the light of day if Sethupathi had not taken up the role of Shilpa. Ashwanth Ashokkumar as Rasukutty, Shilpa’s son, is a pint-sized acting dynamite. 

Equally compelling is the couple’s story which  is progressive as hell and both begins and ends on a hilarious note. There’s the part where Faasil, an acting aspirant, shows off his acting chops to his emotionally orphaned wife (Samantha) by pretending to berate her for the way things unfolded in their marriage. It’s an utterly funny moment when both of them try to slay the dead lover with a butcher’s knife and just can’t bring themselves to. 

The movie tends to get a bit jarring when Mysskin tries to ham his way as Arputham, the godman who had his epiphany during the 2004 tsunami. His constant beseeching of an idol of Jesus got on my nerves but, thankfully, my ordeal was short-lived. Ramya Krishna is a revelation as a mother pleading with a doctor to treat her injured son even though she has no money to pay the bill. 

All in all, Super Deluxe’s visual explosiveness might make you want to go outside for fresh air, but not at the risk of missing a second of this blisteringly beautiful movie.

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