Adamance isn’t a character trait encouraged in most South Asian women. Many of us can remember at least once in our lives when the word was spat with venom at us, as an unfeminine thing to be. Director PS Vinothraj’s Kottukkaali (a pejorative, that translates to ‘adamant girl’) tells a story of an instance when accusations of adamance can take a potentially deadly turn in a woman’s life: when she is in a romantic relationship with someone outside her caste.
In a small village in the north of Madurai district, Meena’s (Anna Ben) romance with a man outside her caste brings the usual litany of the family losing its “honour” and acting as if a calamity has befallen them. According to the breathtaking leaps of faith that come only to the bigoted, the sole reason a woman would fall in love with a man who is not from her community is … no, not choice, but black magic. The man has quite literally enchanted her, Meena’s family reason and set off to a nearby town to meet a well-known seer who they believe can remove the spell. There are many ways to mock the sheer idiocy of caste endogamy, and Vinothraj’s muted and well-timed humour is certainly one of them.
Meena, regardless of what she may want, is betrothed from childhood to her maternal uncle Pandi (Soori). Such marriages are a common practice in Tamil Nadu. But what really amuses you about the film is how in the 1980s and 1990s, such marriages—that ensure caste endogamy—used to be the romantic backdrop of the many rural romances on screen. Strip that away, and what do you have, but a means of proprietorial power over a woman’s body and choices? Kottukkaali burns slowly but determinedly, pointing out how little real love has a role in any of this.
Pandi is everything that Tamil cinema usually valorises in a rural hero—violent, entitled, given to angry outbursts and feudal in his thinking. Far from rich, Pandi and his family cling to their caste as their primary identity. But again, Kottukkaali strips away the pageantry Kollywood offers to such masculinity. Without the pounding music and tricky camerawork used to make heroes of violent men, we see this masculinity for what it really is: power-obsessed and insecure. Soori steps into the role with ease. Every growl Pandi utters, every poisonous glare he gives Meena, every time he launches into a tirade over the smallest problem, you want to applaud the actor for reaching into the soul of an utterly horrible character to bring him alive on screen with terrifying clarity.
Between Vinothraj’s impeccable characterisation and Soori’s performance, Pandi emerges precisely as what the story requires him to be—a petty, small-minded man, drunk on the power he holds over his family.
Soori was last seen in a significant role as one of the leads in Vetrimaaran’s Viduthalai - Part 1 (2023). His performance confirmed what many Tamil movie audiences had already guessed about the actor: Soori can do far more than lukewarm comedy as Sivakarthikeyan’s sidekick. Kottukkaali makes entirely different demands of him compared to Viduthalai and once again the actor delivers.
Anna Ben’s is a largely silent role, but her silence is the proverbial eye of the storm. This is a woman who can find no solace but within the confines of her own mind and for whom silence is the only rebellion available. So she maintains a stony-faced, unapologetic deathly quiet almost throughout the film. Her smiles and words are all she can withhold from her family and she does so with an iron will.
The film plays out as a road drama but is entirely unlike what Tamil cinema usually does with this genre. For one, there is no music. No cutting away to songs in the middle of the story. No appropriately rural-sounding instruments playing in the background. We’re on the road with this family and the only soundtracks available to us are their near-constant bickering and traffic noise. The one time a musical interlude makes a passing appearance, it is only to underscore how ridiculous the system trapping Meena really is.
And she is trapped. The director makes that point clear over and over again. From how she is escorted to even the bathroom to Pandi’s fury when she absentmindedly hums a tune, a claustrophobia-inducing cloud hangs over her life. Sometimes, the point is made a little too obviously, such as multiple shots of a rooster with its legs tied. Since the film otherwise treats its audience as intelligent people, these shots feel a bit immature.
This is only Vinothraj’s second film, it should be remembered. His debut film Koozhangal (2021) was India’s entry into the Oscars that year. The director, backed by Sivakarthikeyan as producer, is back with another brilliant film.
Apart from a few small hiccups, Kottukkaali takes audiences on a winding ride across the arid fields and dusty highways of Madurai towards another more pressing destination: introspection regarding words like ‘culture’ or ‘community’ and what they mean apart from power.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.