One of the great joys of watching a Kartik Subbaraj film is enumerating a list in your head of his possible sources of inspiration. It remains true for his latest directorial venture, Dorothy, too. Like how a home without a woman’s touch has echoes of Kanu Behl’s Titli (2013) – a film about a carjacking crew, comprising a father and his three sons. A scene where the couple bows down to touch an elder’s feet, only to cut to a marriage scene when the couple gets back up, but the man has been replaced by someone belonging to the same dominant caste as the woman. It’s the kind of deadpan comedy scene I’d expect in a modern Malayalam film. A character tries to clumsily kill someone, and repeatedly fails, reminiscent of the assassins in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (2013). A black-and-white track takes place in the present, while cutting to a flashback in colour, like in Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). There’s also the grit and rigour of the Madurai gangster film, championed by the likes of Vetri Maaran, M. Sasikumar, given how the film centres itself around young boys being taught to ‘man up’ each time they walk, eat or wince while seeing a floating corpse, violence. They’re also repeatedly told crying ‘like a woman’ is disgusting. 

Without doubt, Dorothy is the work of a film-lover. That’s, perhaps, its biggest strength. But, by the end of the film, it also seems like its most glaring limitation. Subbaraj wants to do the right thing, but there’s only so much commentary one can offer with insight derived only from movies.

Spoilers ahead, you have been warned.

Subbu (Sananth) and Karthi (Rishikanth) are inseparable childhood friends, despite the latter belonging to a ‘lower caste’. Subbu inducts Karthi into the world of masculinity, which he learned from his father, his two significantly older brothers, and films at the local theatre. Without a mother-figure at home, Subbu finds refuge in Karthi’s mother’s lap, who sells paniyarams for a living.........

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