Perusu Movie Review: Humour rockets through this funeral drama

The director maintains a fine balance, holding onto death as a theme to evoke humour while sensitively dealing with a topic that is almost never discussed in Tamil cinema

It has been several years since Tamil cinema produced an entertaining adult comedy film that provides food for thought to audiences, instead of going the convenient way to write humour that is frowned upon. Director Ilango Ram's Sinhalese comedy-drama Tentigo (Nelum Kuluna) is remade to rightly fit Tamil sensibilities in Perusu, where Halasyam (Alexis) dies mysteriously with the 'final erection', if you will. "Seththa unga appa maari saavanum," declares Ameen (Bala Saravanan) and Redin Kingsley as an uncertainty stares at them, besides Samikannu (Sunil) and Duraikannu (Vaibhav). While they prepare for his funeral, they are also persistently working towards hiding it from pesky relatives and friends. The resultant comedy of errors goes through all the highs and lows before it reaches the climax—throughout which the director maintains a fine balance, holding onto death as a theme to evoke humour while sensitively dealing with a topic that, though common, is almost never discussed in Tamil cinema.

Cast: Vaibhav, Sunil, Niharika NM, Bala Saravanan, Chandini Tamilarasan, Karunakaran, Deepa Shankar and Munishkanth

Director: Ilango Ram

Once Duraikannu, Samikannu, Rani (Chandini Tamilarasan) and Shanthi (Niharika NM) and the rest of the close family get their initial disgust out of line, they consult a doctor, a veterinarian and even a shaman to help deal with the issue. The dialogues are heavy on wordplay and puns, akin to Crazy Mohan dramas and films, most of which are a bag of big misses, and the screenplay shifts from one guest/relative expressing awkwardness to another. The story keeps roaming in circles, and it takes quite a bit of time before the makers find the right rhythm. But once they hit the highway, there is no going back.

The terrific supporting cast do the heavy lifting in elevating the drama. Every time the flavour dips or the film loses its pace, Bala Saravanan and Deepa Shankar hold the fort with their well-timed punches. The film really benefits from the eccentricity of these characters—be it the annoying Kamala akka next door who is waiting at the Halasyam residence to collect pearls of gossip or Durai and Sami's chitappa played by Munishkanth, who capitalises every opportunity to unearth the family's secret, or even the random grandmother who wails during the funeral with Subramani's name and not Halasyam. Every character achieves what they set out to do in the film. That being said, Perusu could have wrapped these jabs and stretches in a slightly shorter runtime.

The entirety of the second half brims with some brilliant stretches that make up for the sluggish pace of the first half. Perusu jets past conflict after conflict and the humour that emerges from its repercussions. The only breather comes when Durai and Sami sit inside a car at midnight to drink a few glasses of alcohol. This scene anchors the whole shebang, poignantly capturing the brothers' inner turmoil to cover their father's 'embarassment' while having to forgo grieving amidst all the hullabaloo. For the first time in perhaps years, the duo would have sat together to have a conversation. Sunil nails his act as an older sibling carrying the burden of the family who have often sidelined his feelings, and that results in him painting a tough face for several years. In a film that concentrates so much on gags and one-liners, Perusu could have utilised more of such emotional moments to bring some much-needed weight and reflection into the film's overall story. After all, we get very little about the dynamics of the brothers and their relationship with Halasyam. At various portions, the jokes don't land, and you would have wished the makers had turned the camera to other characters like Shanthi (Niharika NM in an earnest debut) and Chandini Tamilarasan's Rani. However, the story doesn't give much on their plate.

Nevertheless, the film compensates more than enough by providing a generous dose of hilarious moments, culminating in a penultimate scene where the family is forced to confront yet another secret buried under the coffin. The dominoes fall precisely, triggering back-to-back laughs in a scene that is reminiscent of a similar moment from Sethum Aayiram Pon. These scenes reinforce the fact that humans are rarely good at keeping secrets and that the truth is often far messier than it appears from the outside. Halasyam’s life, much like that of his family members, has been turbulent, yet the film consistently reminds us that behind every major problem lies a seemingly simple solution—waiting to be unearthed.