The weird and out of the box romantic fables of Vignesh Shivan

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You can’t take anything in a Vignesh Shivan film too seriously, as he offsets the absurdity of his loglines with a sort of sincere, anti-ironic sensibility. Everything unfolds with tongue-in-cheek irreverence, and nothing carries real-world consequences. In Podaa Podi, for instance, he subverts rom-com conventions by structuring the film around the seven stages in the life of a couple. This conceit allows him to explore the darker, twisted sides of relationships through humor, layering interpersonal conflict with a detached comedic tone. A husband choosing to impregnate his wife to stall her career, assaulting her dance partner, or sabotaging her dreams might appear regressive on paper. Yet Vignesh reframes these toxic impulses, extracting humor from them instead of condemning them outright.

Vignesh Shivan is always chasing the laugh just around the corner, unafraid to craft absurd scenarios that bring his quirky characters to life, often at the expense of contemplative or coherent storytelling. His films are exercises in mining dark humor from otherwise familiar romantic formulas. While Podaa Podi was a more conventional debut, his voice truly emerged in his sophomore film Naanum Rowdy Thaan, where his flair for offbeat ideas found the perfect acting muse in Vijay Sethupathi. The actor’s pitch, cadence, and delivery aligned seamlessly with Vignesh’s world, one defined by playful wordplay and cheeky humor.

Nayanthara and Vijay Sethupathi in Naanum Rowdy Dhaan.

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The story of Naanum Rowdy Dhaan revolves around a man who falls in love with a deaf woman on a revenge mission. One of the more unique romantic comedies in Tamil cinema in recent years, the film takes a dark, potentially off-putting premise on paper and gives it a comic spin. From this point onward, Vignesh Shivan perfected his signature style of juggling between serious emotionality and silly tomfoolery. Vijay Sethupathi’s character is smitten with Nayanthara’s, pursuing her even as she remains focused on her revenge and larger concerns. This push-and-pull dynamic between the leads feels refreshing, as few romantic films present such fully realized conflicts between two contrasting personalities forced to work together toward a common goal.

Vignesh Shivan’s cinema needed a leading man who could embody its madcap energy while filtering it through a veneer of nonchalance. Enter Vijay Sethupathi, whose clumsy body language and easygoing charm made Vignesh’s quirks land more effortlessly. Naanum Rowdy Dhaan walks a tightrope between comedy and tension, creating tonal whiplashes that feel both risky and refreshing. As a viewer, you sense the tension between the comic presentation and the deadpan delivery of serious moments. Even the villains in a Vignesh Shivan film become comedic foils, delivering witty lines with a straight face. Parthiban’s performance in this film being a perfect example.

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When Vignesh Shivan made his anthology debut with Netflix’s Paava Kadhaigal, he chose a lesbian romance as the basis for his short film. Among the four shorts, it stood out as an unusual entry, but it still bore his trademark irreverence and fascination with awkward relationship dynamics. Here, however, the lesbian couple serves largely as a narrative device to address honor killings and the dangers of conservative parenting, explored with the least nuance of the anthology’s entries. Still, Vignesh’s giddiness at tackling heavy themes through humor is unmistakable. With every detail, from character quirks to staging choices, you sense a mischievous filmmaker mining off-color humor from uncomfortable situations and tense interactions. In his world, henchmen, gangsters, and crime bosses are caricatures and clueless simpletons, fumbling through events without real awareness. The real struggles remain internal, with the hero’s growth sketched in the broadest strokes, but always punctuated with moments of learning along the way.

A still from Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kaadhal featuring Vijay Sethupathi, Nayanthara and Samantha.

Vignesh Shivan continued exploring his dreamy, imaginative worlds with Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kaadhal, starring Vijay Sethupathi, Nayanthara, and Samantha. The film follows a man who has considered himself unlucky since childhood, only to finally find love, but with two women at once. In typical Vignesh fashion, a routine love triangle is complicated further as both women compete for his affection. The emotional core of the film lies in the mother character, who instilled the hero’s belief system during his childhood, a distinct Shivan touch. On paper, the idea of a man leading a dual life and being loved by two women feels like little more than wish fulfillment, yet Vignesh treats it with straight-faced sincerity. He frames the conflict as that of a man whose lack of self-worth is overcompensated by being adored by two very different women, each drawn to a different version of him. The result is a film steeped in excess and camp, brimming with film references, in-jokes, and visual gags that nod to some of Tamil cinema’s most iconic romances, even paying homage to Baahubali and Titanic.

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The hero’s flashback, which explores his childhood struggles with self-worth, is handled with the necessary gravity and frames the structure of the film. Yet, in the very next scene, Vignesh effortlessly shifts gears into campy, overwritten humor as the two women battle for the affection of a man who can’t seem to make a choice. The film stitches together these contrasting ideas with an idiosyncratic style that often feels weightless, but Vignesh keeps the absurdity grounded with his sharp jokes. His self-aware quips and passing one-liners elevate the film beyond camp, transforming it into a playful examination of the romance genre itself, and of what decades of cinema have taught us about love.

Vignesh Shivan is getting ready with Pradeep Ranganathan starrer Love Insurance Kompany, which seems like a heightened, creative spin on an outsider character’s attempts at love in a world where the definition of that very word keeps changing every passing second. Like Parthiban, who built his career on eccentric ideas and offbeat loglines rather than conventional dramaturgy, Vignesh Shivan has carved his niche by experimenting with the boundaries of romance. Love Insurance Company may well give him the space to further pursue his quirky, genre-bending vision.