Thalaivan Thalaivii

After making films that were all about loving your family (Kadaikutty Singham, 2018) and loving your siblings (Namma Veetu Pillai, 2019), Pandiraj returns to home territory with a film that’s all about one family loving another family. It’s interestingly structured, with an inventive narrative tool that adds freshness to the same Visu-movie template. And when we meet Arasi (Nithya Menen) and Akasaveeran (Vijay Sethupathi) for the first time, they’re already married, and they also have a daughter. This gives it the feeling of reading a novel by starting somewhere in the middle, and as we run through the pages, flipping back and forth. We meet new people; we understand their interpersonal dynamics and the love-hate relationship that brought Arasi and Akasam to a point in their story where divorce is one signature away.

Almost half an hour into director Pandiraaj’s ‘Thalaivan Thalaivii’, Nithya Menen’s Perarasi receives a phone call from her husband Aagasaveeran (Vijay Sethupathi). Her phone displays his name as ‘Kirukku Payya’, which loosely translates to ‘mad or crazy man’. This name is not just perfect for Aagasveeran, but for every single person in the world of director Pandiraaj’s ‘Thalaivan Thalaivii’. Set in Madurai, ‘Thalaivan Thalaivii’ begins with Perarasi, along with her parents, performing a tonsuring ritual at a temple for her daughter, but without her husband Aagasaveeran. The couple has been living separately for three months, and we soon learn that Perarasi is seeking a divorce. As their families get involved, and after hundreds of ear-splitting arguments, it becomes clear that Aagasveeran and Perarasi are two crazy, indecisive people who are stuck with each other.