The comedy in Tamil cinema is a treasure trove of pop culture references and is a gift that keeps on giving. One such evergreen scene is the red Chevrolet Impala scene from Karagattakaran. The car became famously associated with the name Soppana Sundari. While the exact context might not serve a direct connection to Aishwarya Rajesh’s latest film, the car very much sets up a delicious premise for a dark comedy that largely justifies its genre. If the Senthil-Goundamani sequence chiefly drew its laughter using the curiosity regarding the whereabouts of the car owner, Soppana Sundari primarily operates on who is the car owner by coherently weaving a series of tracks together, with each character pursuing the possession for various reasons.
Soppana Sundari primarily revolves around Agalya (Aishwarya Rajesh), who lives in a low-income settlement area, along with her mute sister Thenmozhi (Lakshmi Priyaa Chandramouli), mother Lakshmi (Deepa Shankar) and her alcoholic and bed-ridden disabled father. Her brother Durai (Karunakaran) is now distant from them after he gets married. Now this very much can delve into dark zones of poverty, with Agalya the only working member trying to uplift the family of four. But director SG Charles takes a different route. He throws a ray of hope into their lives when Agalya wins a car through a raffle draw.
The car is not only a beacon of hope but also the only happening element in their mundane lives. Soon, an alliance is fixed for Thenmozhi, and the car serves as a dowry. Charles carefully deviates from portraying a sympathetic angle for Thenmozhi. In fact, the film at no given point uses this aspect to draw melodrama for this character. But coming back to Soppana Sundari, the car finds itself at crossroads, when there are multiple claimants to its ownership. There is Durai who actually bought jewellery (or did he?) from the store that organised the raffle draw, and there is Agalya who happened to fill the lucky draw and win the prize, among the many other alibies both the parties set up to take ownership of the car. Not to forget, there is a lecherous cop Kannan (Sunil Reddy) who has an eye on Agalya.
Soppana Sundari has all the right elements for a dark comedy, and it only gets better, especially in certain instances when Agalya’s family is pushed to generate money to retrieve the car from the police station and they resort to organ trafficking at their alcoholic father’s behest. Do we really feel empathetic for a guy who lost his life to alcoholism, and constantly ignored his family? There is a knack for presenting such grim topics, especially with comic undertones, and the film mostly tackles this effectively without many embellishments. There is also a crime comedy in between all of this.
With several such threads running parallelly in Soppana Sundari, it is the screenplay that comes out as a winner, highlighting each of these elements. Within 45-50 minutes into the film, multiple characters are introduced, and we also know their ambitions, and purposes, and they feel like organically woven into the narrative. Halfway into the film, we are convinced by the world built by the makers of Soppana Sundari.
Given it is a multi-character story, a dark comedy, the treatment of the story, and the presence of actors like Deepa Shankar and Redin Kingsley, Soppana Sundari shares a similarity with Doctor or Kolamaavu Kokila offered. But the film eventually plays to its strength and tries to stand out on its own.
All that said, the film is not devoid of weaknesses. There are certain moments where regressive thoughts plague it. For instance, in a moment Agalya propagates the importance of a woman losing her virginity to a husband rather than outside wedlock. But there is a crucial turn to this scene where there is a sense of subversion, but it doesn’t land effectively. In another moment, Agalya is concerned about her ageing sister not getting married, and agrees to give a dowry, but, fortunately, the writing doesn’t dwell too much on this aspect. This apart, an additional dose of melodrama in the second half, and the constant cat-and-mouse chase tends to become a tad bit extra, which tests our patience.
The second half also leaves you wanting more, thanks to the ambition we saw in the first half. Also, a lot of interesting characters become invisible as the film progresses. However, with its ending borrowing inspirations from Guy de Maupassant’s short story La Parure (The Necklace), Soppana Sundari feels like a neatly made ambitious caper comedy, which scores fairly in what it sets out to be.
Director: SG Charles
Cast: Aishwarya Rajesh, Deepa Shankar, Lakshmi Priyaa Chandramouli, Karunakaran, Sunil Reddy