Aruvi, the Tamil film which released in 2017 after a long delay, won several accolades for its fresh and unconventional story — very rare for a Tamil film.
The independent film received a thumbs up from most of the reviewers, who showered love on the experimental film.
An unapologetic female being the protagonist and the story told from her perspective, awed everyone. And since the project was independent, the filmmaker did not make any compromise to use the regular tropes of romance, comedy etc.
Not carrying a baggage of a mainstream film, the film takes full liberty at training guns on the contemporary films.
In an impressive long monologue, Aditi Balan, the female lead, whose perception of the world changes after contracting a life-threatening disease, criticizing the society’s functioning says, “Watching a film costs Rs 120- Enna Mairu padam edukuraanga? (What the fuck kind of films are they making?) If a family is spending Rs 1000, there should be some content in it, right?”
Similarly, in another hilarious scene, a dialogue mocking Tamil actor Vijay comes up, which unsurprisingly led to a huge fight between Vijay and Ajith fans on social media. When there was a trend of dropping Vijay and Ajith references to earn support from fans of these superstars, the film contrary to the trend, spelled out what other films would hesitate to do.
An article in Vogue on ‘11 Tamil films you need to watch’, described the film as “one of the rare films with a sole woman as its lead that is unapologetic throughout.”
There have been several films like Sethu in Tamil cinema where the male lead feels entitled and threatens the female into loving them.
Shifting the gaze, in a very unorthodox scene, Aditi Balan asks a handsome looking man at gun-point to propose to her. A male director — Arun Prabhu — conceiving such an idea and writing it, is super impressive. However, does having a female lead and writing such scenes make it a “feminist” film, or Arun Prabu a feminist? Definitely, no.
Despite employing a new shtick, Aruvi reimposes the idea of a female being like nature — enduring and forgiving. Which is what Aruvi does to those who rape her. The director cleverly doesn’t show these scenes on screen or make it Balaesque — so that the audience are also deceived into forgiving the rapists. Aruvi in Tamil means waterfall, this is a subtext about a woman being like one of the elements of nature.
One of the film’s posters also show Aruvi as a goddess, albeit as a mischievous one carrying an assault rifle. This is another give away of the film’s anti-feminist subtext. Equating women as goddesses or nature, and imposing superhuman qualities of endurance, forgiveness, sacrifice etc, on them has been a scheme which men have tried to retain patriarchy. And Arun Prabu does the same.