Director: Ranjith Jayakodi
Actors: Vijay Sethupathy, Gayathri
Plot: An aspiring music director's life takes a turn when his girlfriend is stalked
In a world where intimacy and romantic relationships are sustained through social media, actor Vijay Sethupathy's much delayed Puriyadha Pudhir is a reflective film on what happens when a conservative society rapidly adopts the technology built to break down the walls of privacy.
Directed by Ranjith Jayakodi, Puriyadha Pudhir is a cautionary tale on two fronts: it stresses the need to exercise caution while capturing intimate, private videos and the importance of the re-evaluation of traditionally held values like honour, guilt etc in a society that is being technologically forced to reveal more and hide less.
Actor Vijay Sethupathy plays the role of Kadhir, an aspiring musician, whose girl friend Meera (played by Gayathri) is constantly stalked and captured on video. The stalker anonymously texts Kadhir, threatening to reveal all to the world unless he does exactly what he is told. Who is this stalker and what does he want? This is what the film is all about.
The film begins in a rather unimpressive manner: the scenes between Kadhir and Gayathri are uninteresting and dull. But the main thread of the film is written in a way that stretches dramatic tension and maintains the suspense until the big reveal in the last act.
The basic logic — the justification of why the stalker does what he does — might seem disagreeable to those who do not believe in a retributive form of justice.
The film is clearly a tad late — it is set in a society that is obsessed with private MMS clips. In today's world, where there is high speed Internet and so much adult content available, we might probably ignore the clip. It is also a film in which an actor like Vijay Sethupathy sleeps through it. He has done far more interesting roles.While the film could have been written well and its internal philosophical logic recalibrated, the film does shine a light on why society cannot preserve conservative values of tying honour to human bodies when mobile technology has invaded our lives.
(The article first appeared in The Hindu CinemaPlus.)