A silenced woman seeing a vision of her former self – or imaginary self – walking freely somewhere afar is simply how PS Vinothraj captures a woman’s yearning for freedom in Kottukkaali. In the initial sequences, you see Meena’s (Anna Ben) grandmother tightly plait her hair, with the camera patiently capturing how stiffly the hair strands are held together, just like the way society wishes to comb and control Meena. But when she looks at her imaginary self, you see a woman whose hair is left free, waving to the tunes of the winds. So does the hair of a young girl who rushes to take her bull back home. As she happily runs around, her hair dances too. This is arguably one of the most powerful sequences representing a woman’s soul in Tamil cinema this year, and such representations have gladly been the norm so far in 2024.

 

The box-office story of 2024 might rather be unsteady – with the second half receiving more crowds through films like Maharaja, Lubber Pandhu and Meiyazhagan even as big star films like Indian 2 and Vettaiyan continue to fall well below the numbers, as Vijay’s GOAT remains one of the exceptions. However, most new releases, especially in the second half, seem to bless us with women characters written with love, care and agency.

 

Women wielding weapons

 

Even among the highest grossers so far, films like Raayan, Aranmanai 4, Demonte Colony 2 and Thangalaan have left us with memorable women. When the wife of a police officer gets into trouble as usual, TJ Gnanavel writes Manju Warrier’s Thara as someone who can protect herself. As four gangsters sneak into her house to threaten her, she shoots a man and warns the rest – a simple agency many women in Tamil cinema – even Trisha’s Sathya in Leo – were long denied of. The Raavanan-Soorpanakai-inspired Raayan too has Dushara Vijayan fight to save a sick Dhanush – it was refreshing to see an angry young woman act purely by her instincts in this macho world.

You can’t simply forget Thaenu (Nivedhthaa Sathish) from Captain Miller who was one of the most trusted and talented members of Miller’s revolutionary gang, who doesn’t hesitate to ride while simultaneously tackling enemies’ or jump onto the battlefield to take down 100 others. The fact that her character wasn’t lured into the love triangle trap shows the authenticity of penning such a character.

 

Although just like GOAT, women in the worlds of Garudan and Maharaja hardly got to do anything, these are only a few films you need to overlook. In the magical realism realm of Thangalaan, Malavika Mohanan engages in bloody battles as Aarathi, the one who is protecting the land of gold. The rawness in her performance, one of her best to date, goes on to also show that many woman actors need such roles to flex their acting chops. The same goes for Priya Bhavani Shankar, who is giving a stronger comeback with Demonte Colony 2 and Black, thrillers that give her scope to perform. Even smaller films like Adharma Kadhaigal, an anthology of revenge stories, have women stand up for themselves and wage wars when necessary. But it wasn’t always about wars and weapons, the little joy of women getting to wear blouses in Thangalaan – the innocence with which Parvathi Thiruvothu and others share about the comfort – created a stirringly moving moment. In the internet slang, when men went in search of gold, women found their diamonds of joy.

 

Not mere tokenism

Fortunately, the Tamil films in the second half have not only managed to strike a chord with the audience and create box office records but seem to have also found a middle ground, where even in a men’s dream world, there are women characters who leave some kind of impression. In a film about male egos like Lubber Pandhu, a companion film to last year’s Parking, the women weren’t simply filling the frames. Gethu (Attakathi Dinesh) might be a proud, successful cricketer but he is a vulnerable man in front of his wife Yashoda (Swasika), who loves him dearly. She packs him a special dish in his tiffin box every day and forgives him too many times but is also self-aware. She ploughs the cricket ground with her tractor, fights with her husband when he makes a grave mistake and even leaves everything behind when her daughter’s life is in question. Just like her mother, Durga (Sanjana Krishnamoorthy) too is rough yet loving and the relationship she shares with her father is poetically captured in the film.

 

In the melodious Meiyazhagan, yet another film centred around two men, you only get glimpses of four women, whose sequences when put together hardly account for just 1/4th of the film’s runtime. BUT each of their lives and emotions is perfectly captured. Like when Arul’s (Arvind Swamy) moraponnu leaves after a heartfelt conversation only to come back and have a tender stroke of touch on him, the time Karthi is proud of his well-educated wife who can speak English, the meaningful conversations between Arul and his wife Hema (Devadarshini), and how the latter keeps nudging him out of his comfort zone, the perfect marriage sequence that depicts the love and longing of a sister, etc – there are too many little delectable joys surrounding women for a film that’s centrally about two men. Such films make you realise that it’s not always about how much screen time women get in a film but about how much of their lives and emotions are we genuinely told about.

Similarly, Poongudi (Nikhila Vimal), a school teacher along with Dhivya Duraisamy’s Vembu in Vaazhai are representations of women who toil for their family’s betterment. Even when Poongudi goes to school regularly, she helps her mother’s tailoring business, just like how Vembu works all day in the banana plantations. Their small henna delights and Poongudi’s dance training sessions are gems of happiness in their hard ways of leading a better life. Speaking about the onscreen Tamil women of 2024 would feel incomplete without Raghu Thatha’s Kayal (Keerthy Suresh) who doesn’t bat an eye in her battle against patriarchy. She might have been a women writer back in the day who had to hide her identity, but she boldly spoke of desires and dreams that many women still long for, standing up for a whole generation.

 

There’s no denying that a lot needs to be improved in terms of portraying sexual violence on screen (Case in point: Vettaiyan). Yet with only one big female-centric film out this year, it’s heartening to see many mainstream films capture the lives of women with the tenderness and respect they deserve. Now, all set to see Sai Pallavi in Amaran as the inspiring Indu Varghese, there’s hope to see more loved and lived women on screen. After all, even if it’s a man’s story, the woman has her own dreams.