Perusu

A bit of googling tells how terminal erection or death erection is an actual condition that’s very much as shocking as it sounds. It is also the core idea behind director Ilango Ram’s Perusu, the remake of the director’s Sinhala-language comedy-drama Tentigo, which bagged multiple accolades. In Perusu, Halasyam, a much-revered elderly person, dies unexpectedly. But his sons Samikannu (Sunil) and Duraikannu (Vaibhav) barely have the time or space to mourn as their father’s corpse, instead of developing rigor mortis where the muscles stiffen, gets a rigor erectus, causing the dead person to have an erection — or priapism as it’s technically called in which a penis remains erect for hours. As the family — which includes the heirs’ wives Shanthi (Niharika) and Nila (Chandini Tamilarasan), Halasyam’s wife (Nakkalites Dhanam) and her sister (Deepa Shankar) — believes this to be a travesty that the villagers and relatives cannot get a whiff of, they try everything in their power to um… bring things under control.

In a sense, Perusu is one of the rare Tamil films that fit the adult comedy genre, as the premise of the story, directed by Ilango Ram, is as wacky as it can get. Halasayam, a respected man from a rural town, is fondly known as Perusu, a term used for an elder or a patriarch of a family or a village. He is one of those notable people of any town who have a say in its affairs. When we meet Perusu, he lands a slap on a youngster for allegedly peeping at women taking a bath in the community pond. Along with his elderly friends, Perusu orders the young chap to behave. Before leaving the place, he doesn’t miss to grin at the ladies himself. The lad resolves to have his revenge, but Perusu doesn’t give him any chance as he dies after returning home from watching TV. But the catch is that Perusu dies with an erect penis, which lands the whole family in trouble. His two sons–Saamikannu (Sunil Kumar) and Durai (Vaibhav)–try their best to ‘de-escalate’ the problem but it won’t die down. If you frown upon my double entendres, then imagine watching a film with such incessant phallic dialogues and words.