#tbh need to rewatch this cos whenever i watch a film on the big screen i automatically rate it higher

[art--harridan]

[Image description: A traditional two-page spread of the character Bella Baxter from the film Poor Things. The largest drawing, which bleeds from one page to the other, is of Bella reclined on a bed. She lays limp and spread out like a discarded doll, wearing a frilly, dramatic dress. The phrase "poor things" is written on the skirt of it. Her expression is a dismayed one, with her eyes staring listlessly and her mouth open, a smear of blood on the corner of it. This drawing is inked with a pen and then shading is added with watercolour, although the rest of the colour is implied by the whiteness of the paper. The other drawing is coloured similarly, but with no pen lines. It uses bolder colours, mostly the primarily red, blue and yellow. It is a piece that focuses on her head and faded away at the shoulders. She has her head tilted to the side, and seems unbelieving or distressed in her expression.]

[gayathreya]

an ode to maara/bommi

[soorarai pottru spoilers]

so i’ve watched it and i LOOOVE it, easily in my top elite list of fav suriya films. there’re many things i love about it; maara’s persona and characterisation, his relationships with the people around him, the suffocating elitist atmosphere of the film, the music, visuals,

but my mind keeps coming back to this specific relationship and it’s my fav aspect of the movie. one that i’m not alone in echoing cos i’ve seen maaany people say likewise. i’d like to gush about them.

maara and bommi were just.. SOOO GOOD together???? i have a very small list of suriya romances i actually care about onscreen and this easily skyrocketed up. cos most of the time, it’s either i really like the heroine but the romance in the film isn’t that great/gets little scope (e.g. ngk, where i like sai pallavi but come on their marriage was trash cos ngk is a trash cheating and manipulative fuckboi, or anushka in singam, which is fine i guess but the third film soured me on all the characters), or it’s a case of me really loving the romance itself but i’m not having loads of feelings about whoever is paired up with him (e.g. ayutha ezhuthu, which is an all time favourite suriya romance highlight on screen and it was fantastic, but esha deol’s character was not at all a standout character on her own even if i enjoyed watching them together).

so there’re many a times the problem for me where either the romance doesn’t work, or the woman opposite him is not fleshed out enough. in comes soorarai pottru and i was DELIGHTED with their individual characterisations and their relationship dynamic cos finally here u have a romance depicted on screen where they’re both essentially treated as equals by the narrative even if the story is naturally centred on maara completely because the film is about him.

bommi is her own person and it’s established immediately the moment they meet, which is the exact reason why maara falls for her in the first place despite her roasting him all the time and after that too. she stands on her own, doesn’t need ~a man~ to help elevate her or achieve what she sets out to do. and she does all this without the help of the protagonist. her character is not dependent on maara in the slightest. she’s easily more successful than maara for the entire film until the end, and her personality isn’t overshadowed by her husband cos she pretty much has her own shit to run and holds her own opposite him. even when maara initially gets his dream off the ground, bommi isn’t relegated to a lower bar within the context of the film where her only role is to support him, but she works at expanding her own business/franchise and meets maara as a respectable equal in his venture as a food vendor, which even maara is surprised by but pleased about. she outright meets him in their shared field of interests and expertise, and maara never once treats her any less or jokes about her proposal.

and of course whenever they came together..... i gotta say, it was pretty hot lol. their emotional scenes had A LOT of weight. their physical scenes were certainly sexy and hot i could def watch them kick it up a notch. i don’t really find suriya has much chemistry with many of the heroines he’s paired up with but somehow he seemed comfortable with aparna enough to do loads of sexy staring, gazing, looking sexual, etc, and actually looked good playing a character who was not just in love with his wife, but who also was physically attracted to her, which is what completely sells the relationship and makes it look organic on screen. it helped that the visuals/lyrics depict him as more submissive in their love too (i thought both veyyon silli and kaattu payale had pretty obvious more sub vibes on behalf of the man, or the more serious bit where he comes back home exhausted and seeks comfort), it really works very well. i adored their scenes and it always works for me when suriya plays more subby characters in his romance because....... because. interests. *coughs* he is Good Boi (tm). he is Sub (tm). plus the physicality of maara/bommi shown is not only sexual, but they had softer moments too which made it all the more endearing. more than once, maara hugs her for solace or when he’s distressed and it’s very sweet and gentle, or the little quick scenes where he puts his hand on bommi’s head. those were all very cute moments and stays with u even though it’s short. it was a lovely sight to see in films where your usual hero/heroine barely even touch each other, or when they do, have no vibes or connect at all, while the physicality here is both sexual and also paired with emotional influence.

the only thing i really had an issue with is the lack of a proper resolution or dialogue after their big fight. i know some people have pointed out the fight itself was not something they liked because he hit her, but i didn’t have an problem with that tbh. it was a natural progression of maara’s character as he was steadily failing repeatedly, getting steadily angrier as he struggled to control it, and thinking she called him a loser was the snap. it worked quite well imo because the narrative also establishes pretty fast he regrets what he did and he immediately goes to look for her, finds her gone, and spends the next how many hours searching everywhere while looking very upset. so i don’t view it as a glorification or justification of his action since we are shown he knows he fucked up. but that being said, it was never mouthed explicitly. i felt their reunion was too quick and too easy and i would’ve liked an explicit line from bommi calling him out on that, and maara explicitly apologising for it and saying openly he messed up big time with her. that was the only part about the relationship i was disappointed by and i wish it was worked in better cos i don’t require a whole conversation or exposition dump, but even a few extra lines would have been nice in the scene he finds her again and runs to once again seek wordless comfort and apology.

>>> ETA: HE DOES NOT HIT HER. i’m adding this lil para here cos i’m uncomf with how many notes this post got spreading this misinfo i wrote myself which i’m wrong about. my first watch i did not catch it and thought nothing of it, but then i saw people saying he did and was talking about it and when i rewatched it, i agreed. but now, after multiple watches, i want to note i’m back to my initial instinct, which is that he doesn’t. maara pushes her by her chin/throat, and he then smacks the plate of food bommi has hard. it’s obvious when u pay attention to the speed and angle the plate flies off to the left, as well as the sound of the metal clang. the only explanation is maara slapping that away and not bommi flinging it. i do urge people to not continue spreading it without fact checking at least, considering sudha in an interview herself had a convo with someone and she agreed with the use of the word ‘’restrained’’ in how maara reacted during the fight, which wouldn’t make sense if he outright slapped her. this also makes it in character for bommi, who doesn’t seem to be the type of person in the narrative who would have just taken that with no fall out after.

SO YEAH despite this one thing, i really, reeeeally loved this relationship and romance and individual characterisations that had their own journey and arc but also were tied down to the same path that they don’t drift away within the frame of their movie and their own goals. this was a married couple shown right with individual personalities and ambitions, and not a woman who was fused to the hero of the movie and only there to meet the commercial requirement of a love track in a film. plus of course uhhh they were really hot together. i’ve mentioned that, right.

cos they were hot

and they should have made out for me

and i would have liked to witness more of them being any kind of physical since suriya and aparna were really nice to look at. O_O