The choice of Madurai, Tamil Nadu’s third largest city, as a setting opens up fresh locations for a film-maker to explore, and new conventions to mock: as the opening voiceover establishes, this temple city nevertheless retains a reputation for harbouring all manner of rogues and thieves. Certainly, the packed matinee crowd I saw it with appeared delighted it had arrived. Yet the film that emerges proves so spirited that one concludes no deity could hold it back. The second collaboration between writer-director Ponram and standup Sivakarthikeyan was subject to production delays and worse luck besides: its initial release date coincided with December’s Chennai floods, a moment when those cinemas not underwater were serving as makeshift shelters. For some while, it looked like the comedy Rajini Murugan might never appear from behind the clouds. T he past weekend’s Thai Pongal festival – marking the point at which the sun begins its six-month journey northwards through the firmament – has yielded a full crop of Tamil releases.
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