Best non-Hindi performances of 2024: From Allu Arjun’s powerful turn in Pushpa 2 to Anna Ben’s performance for the ages in Kottukkaali

A still from Pushpa 2.

Let me begin with Allu Arjun’s act in Pushpa 2, which doubles down, unapologetically, on all the mega-loud elements it uses to pick up the threads on its hero’s doings, three years after the original. The dances are cringe-making, the dialogues are risible, the drama is doused with exaggerated mainstream tropes, but keeping it all together is Allu Arjun who goes at it all with ferocious conviction: the jaatra-sequence, as well as the one in which he takes on all comers, in his the sari-and-nath-feminine-divine-avatar, is powerfully, delightfully subversive.

A still from Ullozhukku.

At the centre of Christo Tomy’s Ullozhukku (Undercurrents) is the fraught relationship between two women, Leelamma and Anju. The latter’s marriage to Leelamma’s son is short-lived for reasons that are made clear as the film bobs along, with flood waters rising, and a funeral getting delayed. Do the dead speak? The best intentions are undermined by deceit, but humans will always take the easy way out. Veteran actor Urvashi as Leelamma and Parvathy Thiruvothu as Anju are terrific, as is the film. You want faces? Take these home with you.

There’s a lot to like in Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys, the highest-grossing Malayalam film till now, but it didn’t blow me away. Yes, the boys– grown men who behave like adolescent-boys-out- to-have-fun– do get stuck between narrow rocks and hard places, and the rescue act is suitably nerve-wracking, but everything proceeds according to plan. In all this, Soubin Shahir gave me one of my favourite acts of 2024, an actor who effortlessly steals entire movies, not just scenes.

A still from Prasanna Vithanage’s Paradise.

Prasanna Vithanage’s Paradise, set against the backdrop of the recent economic upheaval in Sri Lanka, becomes the site of a sharply told domestic-cum-political thriller. It is one of the most layered films of the year, centre-staging Roshan Mathew and Darshana Rajendran’s lived-in performances of a couple straining at the edges, negotiating the cracks in their marriage on a holiday which spins out of control after an unexpected event.

Fahadh Faasil is having the time of his life in Jithu Madhavan’s Aavesham, as an eccentric, clad-in-all-white, festooned-with-gold-chains gangster who turns mentor to a bunch of cowed college boys. Women, as usual, show up only momentarily in this all-boys caper. The film sags in some places, but Fafa is unstoppable.

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Meiyazhagan is an unusual bromance for testosterone-laden mainstream Tamil cinema, not just in its choice of story which proceeds at the placid pace of a bicycle– the choice of vehicle in the film—but also in the actors at the centre of it. Karthi and Arvind Swamy step back from their starry personas, and give us two men forging the kind of connection manly, moustachioed men have traditionally been made to scoff at: real men can be gentle, too.

A still from P Vinothraj’s Kottukkaali.

I’ve saved the best for the end of this short list. In P Vinothraj’s Kottukkaali, Anna Ben is paired with Soori, in a film which talks of big themes—patriarchy, misogyny, casteism, toxic masculinity– through its story of an adamant girl refusing a match chosen by her parents. Soori, as the furious man who doesn’t know any better, is wonderful, but this Ben’s film. Without saying a word– she stays speechless practically through the film—she conveys everything. A performance for the ages.