Double Occupancy Movie Review:
Fantasy is an intriguing genre when it is dealt with intelligently. The genre allows a filmmaker to build a world that he teleports us to, mostly with a 'what if'. For 2 or more hours, we readily fling away our disbelief, only to experience the impossible being possible. The latest in the genre in Tamil cinema that manages to do the above-mentioned is Double Occupancy, where the protagonist is female during the day and male at night. Even for an audience that has witnessed body-swap comedies for decades now, or even gory body horror in The Substance, which has a similar modus operandi, director Aswin Kandasamy’s world is refreshing.
A divine intervention at birth, blessed by a transgender deity, means Rajini has twelve hours as a woman and another twelve as a man. But the catch? The Rajinis are two distinct humans with two different personalities. While the female Rajini (Reshma Venkatesh) is an ambitious genetics researcher, the male Rajini (Santhosh) is a bartender. The frustrated duo, although used to switching between being a man in heels or a woman in boxers, inadvertantly, hate each other due to neither’s ability to live a full life. But the real twist comes when love is added to the mix. But this isn’t a love triangle – it's impossible geometry with overlapping occupancy.
Director: Aswin Kandasamy
Cast: Santhosh, Reshma Venkatesh, Samyuktha Viswanathan, Vinoth Kishan
Double Occupancy does not delve into showing us why our protagonists fall in love with their respective soulmates, Priya (Samyuktha Viswanathan) and Karthik (Vinoth Kishan). So, don’t expect logic to play a role when Priya, an affluent fashion designer, falls for a bartender with skills. To give the director credit where it's due, although he has made Cupid’s work easy in the film, he does sow a few seeds to explain what causes the attraction and what makes them unite. As another refreshing surprise, the conflict goes beyond the usual romance trope and addresses an identity shuffle.
With fantasy, a tricky area is logic. A small slip, and the audience, who may have enjoyed the film upto that point, would have to hang on to the loophole to judge the film. While it can seem like Aswin Kandasamy wanted to avoid the pointy edge of the critics’ pen, he clearly chooses not to overexplain the phenomenon. Through VTV Ganesh’s Raju Bhai, who literally says he’s asking for the “general audience”, we are explained the basic rules of the universe. But through a confused Karthik, we are told another scientific “fact” about their condition, and that’s it. Maybe, if the condition had been thoroughly laid out in front of us, we might have gotten the chance to pick it apart piece by piece. But as I said earlier, Double Occupancy falls in the category of an intriguing fantasy film because it is dealt with intelligently.
While the film has to shift between romance, fantasy, and drama seasmlessly, too many tonal shifts make the experience jarring. After a scene where male Rajini and Priya intimately romance in a song, they are jolted awake by melancholic news that is added so that we shed a tear or two. When male Rajini goes through a revelation and gets some closure from a past wound, the character’s big breakthrough meets a confused audience. Similarly, female Rajini receives a warm birthday surprise from Karthik, only for the night to end in tragedy. Cliche, no? It is these massive swings of emotions that we are forced to go along with in the film’s second half that slowly put it all over the place.
Speaking of cliches, the biggest one comes in the form of VTV Ganesh, who plays… yes, you guessed it right, the hero’s middle-aged, unmarried uncle-friend who's there to ensure that convenient writing isn’t identified. Not a complaint, per se, because VTV Ganesh’s Raju Bhai cracks jokes like, “AR Rahman um naanum serndhu padina epdi irukum? Apdi Irundichu..” to relate a confused Karthik who is learning the truth about Rajini, you don’t mind dismissing the typecasting. There are several other cliches in the film, including the conclusion, that indirectly reinforce the male saviour complex, but not necessarily in a problematic way.
Some of the clichés are welcome, as they go beyond just being touch and go. Take the two leading ladies. Samyuktha, a girl boss, has an all-modern ensemble and often finds herself at the club in the evenings. Reshma’s sartorial choices are more ethnic, on the other hand, and her ambition is a little more traditional. But both women are shown to have agency and the straightforward nature to defend themselves against flirty men but not against violence. After a long time, Vinoth Kishan gets a character that is a breath of fresh air for him. His Pookie Karthik stands up to his name and is walking with a green flag but is not exactly macho. Santhosh, however, is all things macho, and he even gets several mass-action pieces. But that does not also make him toxic, which again defies the cliches. Santhosh and Reshma rule the roost in their respective versions of Rajini, making them the “plot” you would like to watch the film for.
But after a fun-filled ride witnessing romance on rotational duty, Double Occupancy culminates at a rather desolate ending, which leaves us disheartened at best and dissatisfied at worst. The best parts of the film are when it embraces the impossible and trusts us to keep up. It is smart enough not to overexplain and entertaining enough to keep us from asking too many questions. But by the time the credits roll, what remains isn’t confusion about the rules of the universe but a lingering feeling that the world deserved a more fulfilling checkout. At the end of the day, Double Occupancy may not stick the landing, but for most of its runtime, it makes the impossible feel comfortably lived in.
