Super Deluxe

Four stories move through the same day. A woman whose former lover dies in her flat tries to get rid of the body with her husband. A father who abandoned his family years ago returns as a woman. A group of teenagers recognise a neighbour in a film they are watching. A man lives clinging to religion after the tsunami. Thiagarajan Kumararaja directed. The cast includes Vijay Sethupathi, Fahadh Faasil, Samantha and Ramya Krishnan. Sethupathi plays a trans woman, a role argued over at length in India; the performance was praised and the representation debated. The form is a genre mixture: black comedy, family drama, science fiction and moral fable inside one structure. The colour and framing are deliberately artificial. The film speaks directly about religion, sexuality and honour, which is rare at this level of openness in mainstream Tamil cinema. The strands converge at the end without the film offering an orderly close. Who it is for: viewers who like formally risky Indian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting plain storytelling; the film is deliberately scattered and provocative.