Paava Kadhaigal was definitely something interesting. It takes guts to make such films on controversial topics (which is probably why it was made to release on an OTT platform.) And they weren’t bad at all. I actually loved most of most of the shorts. My favorite was Sudha Kongara’s Thangam. Taking on the role of a transgender character is always a pathbreaking and hard thing to do, but it’s rewarding if we see a good performance, and we did, (similar to Vijay Sethupathi in Super Deluxe.) I thought that it was a “cute” way of expressing the paavam and controversy around the things people do to transgender people. (Cute isn’t even the right word, but I don’t know what other word would fit.) It was derogatory or vulgar. It portrayed almost everyone in a good light. Only the people who were being mean to/bullying Sathaar were shown in a bad view (as they should be, because they were idiots for being like that.) What I liked the most about Thangam was the relationship between Sathaar, Saravanan, and Sahira. They would each give their lives for each other, and Sathaar literally did, because he LOVED Saravanan. He gave up almost everything to make sure that Saravanan got to marry Sahara. It was almost a love triangle.
Well, I guess it was more of a love angle than a triangle.
The next short film was Vignesh Shivan’s Love Panna Uttranum. This wasn’t my favorite of the four, (it would probably be my least favorite), but it was definitely a good one. I didn’t expect it to be nearly as funny as it was. If Naanum Rowdy Dhaan was an example of what Vignesh Shivan could do with dark comedy in full length feature, Love Panna Uttranum showed how Vignesh Shivan could pack that dark comedy and content that could be worth nearly a whole feature film and put it into a mere thirty minutes.
The third short was Gautham Menon’s Vaanmagal. I’m not necessarily a Gautham Menon fan, (I actually reeeeaaaalllllyyyy dislike his movies), but I respect his stories and quality of them. (His interviews are basically 90% of the reason I respect him so much, and if I got the chance to meet him, I wouldn’t let it go. At almost any cost.) What really stood out to me throughout the film was the choice of color for their clothes. Whenever someone was thinking the right thing, they were usually wearing some shade of green, but whenever they were thinking the wrong things (paavam), they were wearing some shade of red. I also enjoyed the use of voiceovers because it gave the film a different level of gracefulness, even though what was going on wasn’t nearly as graceful. Simran’s character was definetly something else. It’s not everyday that you see a mother character trying to ignore what happened to a child rather than reporting it to the police. And then there’s the whole pushing-your-child-off-a-cliff-because-she’s-“unpure” thing, but then, it was just her imagination, and she swallowed that stupid pride/honor of hers. And Gautham Menon was, well, doing his thing in this short: carrying the vibes of “I’m cool on the outside but inside I’m feeling kinda crushed I hope no one notices.”
I paid extra attention to this short after I noticed how before the girl became “unpure,” there were jasmines hanging in the car, but afterwards, there were no jasmines, and it was quite entertaining on a whole other level.
As everyone probably noticed while watching, each of the shorts had a red element in it. In Thangam, it was the lipstick. In LPU, it was the house itself. In Vaanmagal, it was their clothes (and this one spherical part of the railing. It was bright red compared to the dusky brown of the wood.) Being honest, I don’t remember what the red element was in Oor Iravu besides the actual blood Sumathi vomited.
Now, as you have probably noticed, I don’t really know what to say about Oor Iravu. It was good and well-acted, but I would say I like this as equally as I liked Love Panna Uttranum. (From most liked to least liked: Thangam, Vaanmagal, LPU and/or Oor Iravu.) Vetrimaaran’s films aren’t exactly my favorite, like Visaaranai. Good movie, but not my movie. (As an analogy, I would say “A good cup of tea, but not my cup of tea.”)
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