Dorothy — Review

It is set in a village in 1990s Tamil Nadu. Karthi and Subbu are inseparable friends. Dorothy, who has just married into Subbu's family, dies early in the film.

The next sentences give away what the film is built on. Subbu withdraws from the world, and when she comes back out she tells her family that she is a woman, and takes the name Dorothy. Her family decides this cannot stand and pays Karthi to kill her. He cannot do it. The rest of the film is what that refusal costs them both.

M. Suganth in the Times of India said Karthik Subbaraj deserves credit for refusing the safer route and taking the story to its uncompromising end. Nandini Ramnath in Scroll called it a terrific subversion of the usual Tamil film romance, while noting avoidable bloat and some overwrought writing.

The main objection came from Anupama Chopra, who found the sharp turns and the central twist inorganic. The ideas are strong; the film jolts you into them rather than building up to them.

Sajin Shrijith in The Week gave it 5 out of 5 and called it Karthik Subbaraj's most complex work and a major upgrade. Gopi Selva in Tamil Guardian gave 4.5, calling it both his most grounded and his most daring film.

The structure is unusual. The present is in black and white and the flashbacks are in colour. Prathyush Parasuraman in the Hollywood Reporter India said the device works, while describing the film overall as reckless, messy, turgidly long and forcefully stylish.

Cinema Express summed up the whole argument neatly: Karthik Subbaraj gives an arthouse idea a mass-film treatment. Whether that lands depends on whether you think those two things belong together.

Sananth plays Subbu and Rishikanth plays Karthi, and the film lives or dies on them. The Week called both phenomenal. Even the reviews that disliked the writing said the pair were extraordinary.

The relationship between them is the real subject. It has to hold friendship, love, shame and violence without ever announcing which one a scene is about, and it does.

Keerthy Suresh is the name on the poster and plays Dorothy well, but she is not the lead. Worth knowing before you buy a ticket for her.

The camerawork drew praise from nearly everyone. Deccan Herald gave 4 out of 5 and picked out the wide shots, the deliberately blurred ones and the near-caricature framing of some characters.

The Week noted the contrast the film keeps returning to — wide open village space against tight, closed-in rooms. The village is where Subbu is watched. The rooms are where she is trapped.

Length is the one technical complaint. At 146 minutes, more than one reviewer felt scenes were held past their point.

Ilaiyaraaja scoring a Karthik Subbaraj film about 1990s village life is close to perfect casting, and reviewers treated it that way. The music was named a strength in nearly every review, including the mixed ones.

The score never pushes you toward a feeling. In a film this uncomfortable, that restraint is a large part of why the hardest scenes work.

It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September, two weeks before the Indian release, and the festival response set the tone — serious, ambitious, difficult.

General audiences have been more divided than critics. Viewer scores have sat well below the review scores, which is usually what happens when a film is this far from a normal Friday watch.

It opened the same day as Meesaya Murukku 2 and took much the better notices of the two.