Subbaraj suffocates Madurai’s rustic, toxic-masculinity-driven world of the 1990s and then flips it, seeing repression, conformity, and caste politics in play.
Dorothy is a film Tamil cinema would never have got if Karthik Subbaraj hadn’t made it yet. Why yet? Because Tamil cinema has been slowly sensitising its audience to ‘accept’ queer cinema, but these narratives have mostly remained outside commercial mass-masala or mainstream space.
Films like En Magan Magizhvan, Neela Nira Sooriyan, Kaadhal Enbadhu Podhu Udamai (KEPU), Vaazhvu Thodangumidam Neethanae, or recent portrayals in Once More and Vandhandhi (Season 2) met a similar fate. The fate where they have to handle two pressures: one, the Tamil cinema audience itself, and another, its community’s authentic portrayal. Especially, Kadhalikka Neramillai’s scene of a simple Christian gay marriage was edited, shamed, and put to mockery on X and Instagram by queerphobes, some from a certain popular actor-politician fanbase.
Dorothy faced this even before its FDFS screening; unfortunately, it still faces the same. The mere announcement, after the film’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) screening, that it was the first mainstream film to have an LGBTQIA+ theme pissed off many queerphobes. But Subbaraj handles it as Thiagarajan Kumararaja did in Super Deluxe, or Pa Ranjith in Natchathiram Nagargiradhu. A slow subversion.
Set in 1995’s Madurai in Sevapatti village, Dorothy mostly has men, with very few women, who are either regarded as “dolls,” stripped of their voices and dignity, thrown into parched wells, or unspoken about. It’s a village where two childhood friends, Karthi (Rishikanth) and Subbu (Sananth), grow up where casteism and classism are overt, family honour and hyper-masculinity are the norm, and being dominant, violent, and socially powerful gains you inroads.
When Subbaraj flips the film midway, everything changes. Dorothy (Keerthy Suresh) does that. Karthi becomes like Subbu; Subbu like Karthi. Dorothy becomes the agency with which Subbu comes out with swag; she becomes a lifeline, a woman with strong ideals who holds femininity as strength, a strong strand of hope for him to shake off - both the caste equilibrium and the gender identity hatred he languished in for so long.
Rishikanth, Keerthy, Soundararaj, Shanmugaraja and Sanath are all terrific in their portrayal and are perfectly cast. But Dorothy isn’t without flaws. Subbaraj’s film sometimes feels like it reeks of sympathy from the male audience and is shaped by the male characters in Dorothy for the trans character to work on screen. A literal physical assault on a trans woman (played by trans actor Jeeva Subramanian) is played off for a character to later realise and apologise for. The constant verbal taunts from Karthik toward Subbu add to the audience’s giggles.
But it’s a casteist, patriarchal, cis-heteronormative world that Subbu and Karthi are dealing with, rather than the urban safe space, home, mere acceptance, and ‘dignified’ job that Bhanu got from Neela Nira Sooriyan.
The question of queer actors in queer roles also pops up. Even though Dorothy does feature trans actors in trans roles, the lead trans character is still played by a cis-het actor. This could reflect the industry’s limitation of queer actors, previously cited by KEPU director Jayaprakash, or a filmmaker’s choice.
Subbaraj’s Dorothy is the first Tamil queer film that handles casteism with queerness. In every layer of Dorothy, Karthi subtly suffers from being lower-caste. From his first love and lifestyle to the way he is asked to eat in Subbu’s home. Even caste explains why Subbu achieves proximity to Dorothy and why Karthi remains excluded, and why cops have leeway with some upper-caste members, even aiding wealthy Veeraiya to execute a queer-based caste killing.
Subbaraj approaches the era’s queer transitions, the importance of correct pronouns and avoiding dead names, and the brutal social conditioning for individual freedom with remarkable audacity, with Maestro Ilaiyaraaja’s intuitive score emphasising this normalized violence, understanding precisely when to play and when to pause.
Ilaiyaraaja’s music is mesmerizing and haunting, as one male audience member said, especially the Dorothy theme. It remains haunting because you feel the expansiveness of its femininity. It’s a woman’s wail, neither alluding to joy nor sorrow, just a wail. The wail lingers much like ambient queerphobia haunts queer lives.
The way Muthumani and old Ilaiyaraaja classics such as the Veedu BGM are played feels remarkably fresh, alongside Tirru’s striking cinematography, which intentionally uses nauseating long shots to capture social chaos or allegorical salna pouring over parotta paralleled with draining blood. Ganesh Siva’s crisp editing handles the pacing deliberately gently, letting the film turn capricious during the fallow field fight (moving choreography by Dinesh Subbarayan).
Rather than segregating ‘arthouse’ and ‘mainstream’ audiences, Subbaraj engages both, says to live with it, with its world, with Dorothy, and destroys the core idea of gender discrimination in its final scene: that it doesn’t really matter whether Dorothy is trans, non-binary, or any other gender identity or sexual orientation. All that matters is whether cis-hets give the person basic dignity and acceptance, defying the confines of accepted societal norms, expectations and stigma.
Dorothy stands as Karthik Subbaraj’s most grounded work and a significant milestone in Indian cinema, as it exposes bigots in claimed-to-be ‘modern’ Tamil society when trans people are already grappling with the 2026 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act and the recent queerphobia directed at the peaceful Chennai Rainbow Self-Respect Pride March graced by queers, allies, and cis-het people.
