Can you even imagine an Indian film that starts with 'I am a Disco Dancer' playing during a scene of death by orgasm (yes!); has a boy's father disappear, only to return years later, as a transwoman in a sari — and yet, ends up as a deeply philosophical film? Thiagarajan Kumararaja's Super Deluxe, which he has written, directed and produced in Tamil, socks us in the solar plexus with its sheer brilliance. It is a landmark in contemporary Indian cinema. Having run for three weeks in metros all over India, and released overseas, it is in its fourth week in Chennai and Bengaluru.

Super Deluxe is Kumararaja's second feature, eight years after his arresting 'neo-noir' thriller Aaranya Kaandam (Anima and Persona, 2010; now on Hotstar). Super Deluxe tells us four stories that are linked, but only obliquely. The stories are daring: Vaembu (Samantha Akkineni) cheats on her husband Mugil (Fahadh Faasil) with an old flame, but after he dies, Mugil must help her dispose of the body. A father (Vijay Sethupathi) walks out on his young son, and returns years later as the sexy transwoman, Shilpa. A bunch of teenagers watch porn; of them, Soori is gutted to discover that his mother (Ramya Krishnan) is a porn actress. And his father Arputham (Mysskin), who survived the tsunami, is now a priest with his own flock. Unusually, Kumararaja wrote the overall narrative, but the four stories were written by Nalan Kumarasamy, Neelan Sekar, Mysskin and Kumararaja himself.