Hindi film Gehraiyaan, directed by Shakun Batra and starring Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa, came out in February this year on Amazon Prime Video, sparking several conversations on extramarital affairs, morality, mental health and so on. While the film received its fair share of brickbats, it was appreciated by a section of the audience for its non-judgmental treatment of the extramarital affair on screen, particularly since it involves the woman lead committing adultery.
Malayalam film Kaanekkaane, directed by Manu Ashokan, which streamed directly on SonyLiv in September last year, is about a man who leaves his wife to die in a road accident in order to carry on with his extramarital affair. He is, however, torn by guilt and the film deals with his complicated equation with his late wife’s father who suspects him.
These films caught the attention of the audience because of the unusual and layered way in which they dealt with the subject of adultery. In Tamil cinema, adultery has been dealt with on screen across decades, with the latest being the upcoming Vignesh Shivn film Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kadhal starring Vijay Sethupathi, Nayanthara, and Samantha.
Watch: Trailer of Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kadhal
From the promos, Kaathuvaakula seems to be a breezy comedy about a married man who cheats on his wife and isn’t ready to let go of either woman, leading the trio to explore a polyamorous relationship. It rather reminds one of Balu Mahendra’s Rettai Vaal Kuruvi (1987), the remake of Hollywood film Micki & Maude, which is on a similar premise. The idea of a man cheating on his wife has frequently been the subject of comedy in Tamil cinema; typically, these films show a man ‘trapped’ between two women, trying to please them both and finally getting caught. His punishment, however, is seldom severe.
In Rettai Vaal Kuruvi, for instance, the man (Mohan) continues his relationship with the two women after fathering children with both. In Gopurangal Saaivathillai (1982), directed by Manivannan, the wife (Suhasini) is portrayed as an unattractive, naive woman who ends up as a domestic worker in the home her husband (Mohan) shares with his mistress (Radha). The wife’s name from the film, Arukanni, is used even today as a slur to suggest a woman is ugly. At the end of the film, the wife transforms into a beautiful woman and the mistress gives up the man and unites the couple, though she is pregnant with his child.
In Panchathanthiram (2002), directed by KS Ravikumar, a group of married men who frequently use the services of a sex worker named Maggie (Ramya Krishnan), get into a soup after she is found dead in their hotel room. This film, too, is a comedy and the men don’t suffer any serious consequences because of their actions. In K Bhagyaraj’s Chinna Veedu (1985), the husband ill-treats his wife (Kalpana) because she’s overweight and takes on a mistress, but he receives a sympathetic treatment with the wife ‘saving’ him from the evil ‘other woman’ who was out to trap him. K Balachander’s Manmadha Leelai (1976) with Kamal Haasan in the lead is a comedy about a man with a roving eye and his conflicted wife.
Balu Mahendra’s Sathi Leelavathi (1995) is once again a comedy about a philandering husband (Ramesh Aravind) but the wife (Kalpana) in the film has far more agency than the other films. She isn’t portrayed as an all-sacrificing woman but as someone who uses her agency to get her husband back. Still, the husband gets away with his cheating and is reunited with his family.
In the critically acclaimed Mandela (2021), the kind-hearted and progressive President of the village where the story unfolds, is a bigamist who marries a woman from each of the warring caste groups. He is nowhere questioned in the story and the situation is instead treated as a humorous subplot.
In contrast, there have hardly been any films that show a woman committing adultery as comedy. Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe in which Samantha plays a woman who cheats on her husband with her ex boyfriend is among the exceptions. In the film, her lover dies when in bed with her and she ends up taking her husband’s help to conceal the former’s body.
The great Tamil epic Silapadhigaaram has at its heart a virtuous wife who seeks vengeance for her husband’s death though he was an adulterous man. The epic has inspired two films — Kannagi (1942) and Poompuhar (1964), both of which are faithful on screen adaptations of the story. Kovalan (Kannagi’s husband) is characterised as a good man who is led astray by a wily courtesan, and receives sympathetic treatment. His remorse leads Kannagi to take him back, and the focus of the story is on her chastity and how it enables her to seek revenge for his death.
In the 1954 film Andha Naal (a still from the film that shows different characters pointing a gun is a popular meme template even now), Sivaji Ganesan plays Rajan, a radio engineer who is found dead in his house. Considered to be the first Tamil film noir, the plot revolves around the various characters and the motives they had to kill Rajan. Among the suspects is Ambujam (K Sooryakala), a dancer and Rajan’s mistress, who is pregnant with his child. Though adultery is not the reason Rajan dies, his behaviour with Ambujam is one of the factors that throw a shadow upon his character. This is among the few times that a leading man’s on-screen adultery wasn’t characterised as comedy but used to establish his less than desirable qualities.
Rosappu Ravikkaikari (1979) and Sindhu Bhairavi (1985) have a similar premise but the resolution of the plot varies because of the gender of the protagonists. In Rosappu, the remake of a Kannada film and directed by Devaraj-Mohan, Nandini, an educated and modern woman (Deepa), ends up marrying Sembattaiyan, an unsophisticated simpleton (Sivakumar). Her frustration leads her to have an affair with a man she sees as more deserving (Sivachandran). However, the affair ends in tragedy with her husband taking his own life and Nandini contemplating suicide herself.
Interestingly, Sivakumar played the opposite role in K Balachander's Sindhu Bhairavi. He appears as a classical musician who is unhappy with his naive wife (Sulakshana) and falls in love with a woman who he sees as his intellectual equal (Suhasini). Not only does his wife forgive him for the affair, he also gets a baby through his mistress that his wife accepts since she cannot become pregnant. In its time, the film was celebrated for presenting a bold woman in Suhasini’s character though the patriarchal lens is glaringly obvious in retrospect.
Watch: Sindhu Bhairavi
Kalki (1996), also directed by K Balachander, is another film where an extramarital affair and a subsequent pregnancy become the hallmarks of a ‘bold woman’. Kalki (Shruti) wilfully enters into a relationship with an abusive married man (Prakash Raj) only to enlighten him about his errant ways. The film is often cited as an early example of feminist cinema but the overt male gaze in the understanding of women’s experiences cannot be ignored now.
In Agni Natchathiram (1988), directed by Mani Ratnam, the sons (Prabhu and Karthik) of a bigamist (Vijayakumar) who is a senior IAS officer, are at loggerheads with each other. While the film shows the young men berating the father for his choices, they nevertheless come together to protect him when his life is in danger, marking their allegiance towards him. In the director’s later work Chekka Chivantha Vaanam (2018), Arvind Swamy plays Varadhan, the eldest son of a mafia family, who has an affair with a journalist (Aditi Rao Hydari). His practical wife Chitra (Jyotika), however, is unfazed by this and stays in the marriage.
In Pachakili Muthucharam (2007), a remake of the Hollywood film Derailed and directed by Gautham Vasudev Menon, a married man (Sarathkumar) is lured into having an affair with a woman (Jyotika) who is actually part of a criminal gang. While his wife (Andrea) first walks out on him when she finds out about the affair, she forgives him after a few days and decides to return.
There have been very few Tamil films that have explored the subject of adultery from a female point of view. In Balu Mahendra’s Marupadiyum (1993), a remake of the Hindi film Arth, Revathi plays Thulasi, a woman whose husband (Nizhalgal Ravi) deserts her for another (Rohini). Though his affair fails and he asks Thulasi to take him back, she refuses to do so, choosing to be a single woman. She also respectfully declines the attentions of another man, a singer (Arvind Swamy), and adopts her domestic worker’s daughter due to circumstances. This is among the rare films where the husband’s adultery is not forgiven and the plot doesn’t hurtle towards preserving the institution of marriage at any cost.
Watch: Marupadiyum
In Prem Kumar’s 96 (2018), a married woman (Trisha) spends a night with her former high school boyfriend (Vijay Sethupathi), reliving their memories and piecing together past events. Although they do not have sex, the film led to quite a few discussions on social media about whether it was “correct” for a married woman to harbour such romantic feelings for another man. In Ram's Peranbu (2018), the mother of a child with cerebral palsy leaves the family for another man, frustrated by her husband's (Mammootty) lack of involvement. Refreshingly, her character isn't denounced for it.
Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kadhal has two top women stars from the Tamil industry, Nayanthara and Samantha, in the cast, both of them known for carving out their own space in a male dominated field. Will the film overturn cinematic traditions and surprise the audience with a new take on the subject of adultery? One certainly hopes so.