‘Drive-Away Dolls, ‘Challengers’ and ‘Viduthalai: Part 2’: Three films that promise sparks in 2024

Have the Coen brothers split up for good? Will ‘Challengers’ score? What is Vathiyaar’s backstory in ‘Viduthalai’? Some movie musings for 2024...

The year 2024 is looking up for movies, both in India and internationally. Ethan Coen has his second solo directorial in the offing, while Luca Guadagnino and Vetrimaaran are bringing their much-awaited films. After the carnage at the end of 2023, a look into the new year and what it holds.

There was much furore among die-hard fans of the Coen brothers when they separated and started doing their own projects. Joel went off and directed The Tragedy of Macbeth and Ethan made Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, a documentary about the rock and roll legend. Ethan when presenting his documentary at Cannes in 2022 declared that he was done making movies, and the last two films the duo had made had left him jaded. Makes one wonder if it’s the pressure of putting out decades of extraordinary content? Or is it just that the industry has morphed and evolved into a beast that bays for spectacle? Hollywood is producing grand spectacle after spectacle, with some of them just making a spectacle of themselves while others fill coffers, ka-ching over ka-ching. The brothers, however, never fit into any boxes and have remained creative vagabonds so Ethan’s answer was interesting. When asked why producing movies had lost its sheen, he said that it had become more of a grind and less fun.

Then when he announced Drive-Away Dolls, a road trip comedy caper, it was clear that he was ready to have some fun again. It’s hinted that it could be the first of a queer trilogy. Drive-Away Dolls looks Thelma and Louise-esque in its trailer. Jamie, played by Margaret Qualley, has suffered a bad break-up and her friend Marian, played by Geraldine Vishwanathan, needs a vacation desperately. Both thirsty for a change of scene head off on a road trip to Tallahassee. They rent a car which carries a suitcase that’s not theirs (of course). As they run for their lives from a bunch of goons who are after the suitcase, the film promises one hell of a road trip. Then there’s the stellar supporting cast of Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal.

Ethan has written the film with his wife Tricia Cooke and directed it. There is as much panic among fans as there must have been when The Beatles split up and John and Yoko went off to make an album. Have they split forever? Will the music ever sound as good? With the Coen brothers, the answers to a real split are vague as news keep surfacing that they will be reuniting soon. Judging from their personal interviews, they are still spending summers together as a family. Phew.

Luca Guadagnino has wedged himself gently but firmly into cinema history with his film Call Me by Your Name. The film starring Timothy Chalamet was a slow dance that haunted audiences. Suspiria, his horror film with Tilda Swinton, and Bones and All, a love story that explores the prickly theme of cannibalism, followed. Luca doesn’t pick easy stories to tell. This year he brings to the theatres Challengers, a love triangle set in the hyper-kinetic world of tennis. Sports films are usually doomed by their trajectory; they keep getting made but they are mostly predictable — intense training, exultant winning, nasty injury, epic failure, roaring redemption. Sports by nature is unforgiving, stretching the mind with the body, testing brutally the player’s endurance and focus but when you throw in some jealousy into the game, it could soar higher.

Challengers has the sleek Zendaya whose role as Rue in the series Euphoria remains transcendental. Here, she plays Tashi alongside Josh O’Connor as Patrick and Mike Faist as Art. All three are Grand Slam players who become messily entangled. Tashi, whom both the men desire and admire from first sight on court, dates one but marries the other. She gets injured and drops out of the game, and becomes her husband’s coach. When his career nosedives, she signs him up to play against the ex-boyfriend. It’s a messy reunion and reeks of sensuality, jealousy and strife. The film feels more like a complex drama than just a sports film.

Vetrimaaran said in an interview that he sees a future for Tamil cinema where 10 to 15 big heroes will continue to make their films with a clutch of directors for large-scale theatrical releases, while he and his tribe will keep telling their stories independent of big heroes or its related machinery, and find ways to exhibit them. It is evident today that big hero films draw audiences to theatres, and scale matters more than story. So in a milieu where what we watch watches us, and content is pushed to viewers through all possible platforms, Vetrimaaran doesn’t look like he wants to push anything but his own limits as a filmmaker. His human dramas have made the common man’s story commercially viable. Viduthalai: Part 1, which released last year, with comedian Soori doing the flip as the protagonist Kumaresan, is the story of an idealistic rookie cop stationed in a remote hill station. After a terrorist train blast, the insurgents are still at large.