Nayanthara‘s ‘O2’ released on Disney+Hotstar last friday. The Tamil language Survival thriller film revolving around a mother-son duo’s ordeal after being caught in a landslide opened to disappointing reception. The reception of Nayanthara’s ‘Netrikann’ that premiered on Disney+Hotstar earlier was also on similar lines. Off-late there has been a trend where female centric tamil films have been massive disappointments.
Nayanthara’s Airaa (2019), Keerthy Suresh’s Penguin (2020), Aishwarya Rajesh’s Thittam Irandu (2021), Boomika (2021), Jyothika’s Ponmagal Vandhal (2020), Trisha’s Paramapadhan Vilayattu (2021) etc are some of the other films that faced disastrous reception from critics and audience alike. Except Arun Matheswaran’s Saani Kaayidham that had Keerthy Suresh in a powerful role, both on paper and execution wise and Mookuthi Amman starring Nayanthara as a goddess, none of the female-centric films from the Industry in the last 2-3 years managed to leave a mark.
One wonders if the trend is simply because female centric films as a genre has become redundant for the industry or is it done to death without any proper effort being put to writing and execution. Most of the times the films exist as a namesake female centric film. There’s no female gaze in the writing or well executed elevation scenes for the leading women. They simply just exist as the primary protagonist of the film as either epitome of motherhood or piosity or oppressed apologetic naive under-dogs.
Stars of Nayanthara’s, Keerthy Suresh’s, Jyothika’s and Trisha’s stature deserve better films written on them, for them. They deserve well written characters, meatier and layered roles that we very often see male stars in. They also deserve to come on board for films that truly celebrate them instead of using them as pawns to get a film rolling. Tamil Cinema needs movies like Magalir Mattum, Mozhi, Taramani, Maya, Aruvi, Kolamaavu Kokila, Imaika Nodigal etc back.. How about putting efforts in writing a female centric film where the woman is not scorned to knock the hero in her or not bound by maternal emotions, for once? Not that hard, we believe.