In 2014 Karthik Subbaraj made Jigarthanda, an inventive, unusual, funny Madurai film about the making of a Madurai film on a local don, Assault Sethu. Now, with Dorothy, Subbaraj returns to the same world of rough and tough rowdies, their angst and anger, machismo and toxic masculinity, the endemic violence and gore of street brawls, family battles and gang wars and the reality of caste and class discriminations and honour killings. But, like Jigarthanda, he tries to subvert the conventions by attempting to do the impossible: feminize the uber macho world and turn its bro codes upside down.
The film played to a packed house and appreciative audience in the Centrepiece segment of the Toronto International Film Festival in the presence of Subbaraj, lead players Keerthy Suresh, Sananth and Rishikanth and producer Guneet Monga Kapoor, among others.
Set to release in a couple of weeks, Dorothy is also hoping to be India’s entry to the Oscars with TIFF, hopefully, marking an auspicious start.
So what to expect from the set in the 90s Dorothy?
A tale of two close friends, Karthi (Rishikanth) and Subbu (Sananth), whose life transforms with the arrival of Dorothy (Keerthy Suresh), it’s a gangster Western meets a thriller meets a road movie meets a romantic musical with a fabulous soundtrack from Ilaiyaraaja. The cinephile Subbaraj cleverly packs in several homages to cinema as well.
It’s flamboyantly mounted, has an expansive canvas with the rural Madurai landscape becoming a character itself.
Character building that is marked by twists and turns of the compassionate kind that you wouldn’t have seen coming, all thanks to Subbaraj’s densely plotted script that plays with the narrative perspective, what he chooses to show the audience, at what point in time and from which point of view.
Having said that, the portrayal of crude violence against women is discomforting in a film that takes a stand against it. While not revealing more for the sake of the surprise, or shock, the film promises to offer the viewers, it does get clunky and clumsy when it comes to conflation of certain gender identities and the unexpected turn in the Karthi-Subbu friendship, though well-intended in striking at the very roots of masculinity, feels sudden, forced and corny. It needed to be better grounded and steadily built up.
The entire ensemble is rock solid but at the core is the trio of Keerthy, Sananth and Rishikanth. Keerthy with her radiant, humanitarian and warm-hearted presence is the gentle, progressive trigger in the insular conservatism and the strong and sturdy Rishikanth and a chameleon like, standout Sananth are the personifications of the essential liberalism that Subbaraj aims to underscore.