Mona

As we get ready to enter 2021, Paava Kadhaigal, Tamil anthology of four films streaming on Netflix, makes one question if we really are living in a fair world. With gender-based violence as the connecting theme, the four stories — Thangam, Love Panna Utranum, Vaanmagal and Oor Iravu — make one feel the ultimate tragedy of being a woman in a man’s world.

The first story, Thangam, is that of true love, only it’s at the mercy of societal bonds. Two childhood friends, Saravanan (Shanthnu Bhagyaraj) and Sathaar (Kalidas Jayaram), are working towards their goals. Saravanan gets educated and finds himself a job so that he could marry girl of his dreams, while Sathaar saves money for his sex-reassignment surgery. Within the little over 30-minute run-time, it catches the essence of an inter-faith marriage and the pain of being a transgender.

Vignesh Shivan’s Love Panna Utranum is themed around honour killings. How far would one go to save honour? Well, here one daughter is to be sacrificed before a lesson is learnt. Kalki Koechlin (Penelope) turns narrator for this story. As one daughter asks her father’s permission to get married to her lover, their driver, the deceitful leader of an honour killing group is swayed to put false ‘honour’ over everything. While the subject is grim, this one is a breezy take with a few moments of tenderness.

Heartbreaking is Gautham Vasudev Menon’s Vaanmagal. A little girl falls prey to a lecherous man, as the family fights the guilt of not being able to save her. Things turn traumatic for each one to end up in a bigger disaster. The film makes one think, just like the protagonist mother Mathi (Simran), if a woman’s body is the seat of family’s honour. Each member takes the trauma differently, the father tries to build up the girl’s faith in life again and her brother doles out the rightful punishment to the perpetrator of the crime.

Vetrimaaran's Oor Iravu once again brings into focus honour killing. The father’s favourite chid has married a man of her dreams, but from a low caste. As the father (Prakash Raj) shows up in their perfect world in the city hoping to throw a baby shower, one takes it to be a story of hope. Only in the deft hands of Vetrimaaran's, as the night grows so does the haunting background score while foretelling the worst imaginable! Culled from life, it remains an unjust society as the wronged man fights for justice. Four National Film Awards to Vetrimaaran's credit, in Oor Iravu he only lives up to the expectations, only the result leaves one feeling despondent at the harsh reality of it all.

The four stories comprising Paava Kadhaigal are an artistic triumph making one notice the wrongs and hopefully work towards a just society.

mona@tribunemail.com