If a man kissing a trans woman disturbs you, Dorothy is exactly the film you need

Director Karthik Subbaraj's Dorothy follows Subbu's transformation into Dorothy and Karthi's shifting response. The film links love, caste and masculinity while challenging how trans desire is seen.

In Short

• Dorothy challenges stereotypes by portraying a trans woman beyond suffering
• Film contrasts casteist violence with a tender trans love story
• Subbu's transformation into Dorothy symbolises self-acceptance

"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

The widely shared phrase perfectly encapsulates what director Karthik Subbaraj's Dorothy sets out to do. Starring a spectacular Rishikanth and Sananth as Karthi and Subbu, respectively, the film is a daring attempt to make cinema that comforts those who have long been pushed to the margins while unsettling those who have always occupied the centre.

Tamil cinema has explored trans lives before, but there has often been a familiar thread running through these stories: suffering. Trans characters are made to endure rejection, discrimination, violence and social isolation. Dorothy flips that narrative on its head. Here, Karthik Subbaraj gives a trans woman something rarely afforded to her on screen: the space to be desired, to experience love and to exist beyond her suffering.

And that is precisely where Dorothy becomes uncomfortable. By challenging conventional ideas of masculinity, desire and who gets to be seen as desirable, the film unsettles a section of its audience even as it offers recognition and comfort to those who have rarely seen themselves represented this way.

A quick spoiler warning before we go any further: if you haven't watched Dorothy yet, turn back now. The film has a few surprises up its sleeve, and this piece is about to pull them out one by one.

Dorothy, at the outset, feels like two different films. The first half plays out like a horror film. Subbu belongs to an upper-caste family where the casteist patriarch Whistle Veerayya (the brilliant Muthukumar) runs the show. Under the guise of lending money, he harasses women and humiliates men. His two sons, including the youngest, Subbu, were raised to violence from a young age.

When young Subbu rescues his friend Karthi from a group of bullies and brings him home, his father's first question is about Karthi's caste. The two boys naturally grow closer through violence, and as they grow older, the innocence and warmth they once shared slowly begin to disappear.

But beneath Subbu's rugged exterior is a deep desire to embrace femininity. His casteist and misogynistic family leaves little room for him to understand or express that part of himself.

And what about his best friend Karthi? As a child, Karthi cries freely. But Subbu teaches him that crying is for women, and Karthi quickly learns to suppress his vulnerability. He, too, becomes a product of the masculinity that surrounds him, dismissing Subbu whenever he shows any softness.

Subbu has already lost his mother and sister to the oppressive men in his family. He later speaks of those losses with a disturbing nonchalance when talking to his sister-in-law Dorothy (Keerthy Suresh, an angelic presence), who also meets her fate at the hands of the men in the house. Numbed by death and years of suppression, Subbu's losses, particularly the women he has lost, push him closer to embracing the identity he has kept buried.

Then comes one of the film's most haunting moments. Subbu transforms into a woman, a desire she has carried since she was 16. She steps out in a saree, hair tied in a bun with kajal and pottu (bindi) on her eyes and forehead. And the moment Subbu becomes a woman, death follows her just like how it drove the women in the family to nothingness.

This time, it comes via Karthi, his childhood best friend.

This is when Dorothy, the movie, becomes a love drama. When Karthi sees the transformed Subbu, his immediate reaction is disgust. In a way, he is dealing with a loss: the loss of the friend who taught him to stay strong since childhood.

As Karthi takes Subbu on a road trip with the intention of killing them, he gets enough time to process that grief. The friend he knew is no more. The years they spent together belong to the past. And standing before him in all her feminine glory is Subbu, finally getting to live the life they always wanted.

Minutes before mustering the courage to kill Subbu, Karthi asks her to say what she wants. Subbu is content and speaks her heart out. That is all it takes for Karthi to understand the person they have become: someone who has lost so much for one small dream, the dream to be themselves.

What happens next in Dorothy is precisely the portion that disturbs many. Karthi's friendship with Subbu blossoms into romance. Friends falling in love is something we have seen in countless films. What is new here is who the two friends are. Ideally, nobody should find this offensive. It's a consensual kiss between two individuals who look past their gender and any other chain that drags them down.

And their love finds its first true expression in a kiss. The end credits roll right after, but they also mark the beginning of Karthi and Subbu, with Subbu taking the name Dorothy.

The kiss between the two, while greeted with hoots and cheers in theatres, also received backlash online. Internet users criticised Karthik Subbaraj for allegedly "spoiling culture" by showing two men kissing on screen. But the biggest thing they miss is this: Subbu is not a man pretending to be a woman. Dorothy is the person Subbu always wanted to be. And Karthi has accepted Subbu as Dorothy - embracing feminity.

It's simple, really. If a kiss between two consenting adults, a story of self-discovery, or a person finding comfort in the feminine disturbs you, perhaps Dorothy is exactly the film you need.

Because Dorothy asks you to see trans people as human beings, with the same desires, longing, love and agency that men and women have always been allowed to claim. It is audacious enough not merely to show a trans woman as a sufferer, but as an emotionally aware human being who wants to love and be loved.

More importantly, Dorothy shows that acceptance and inclusivity can also be a form of masculinity, perhaps a more meaningful one than the violent version imposed on Karthi and Subbu as children.

For all these reasons and more, Dorothy deserves to be talked about. It does not merely celebrate a trans character or a love story. Dorothy does not ask you to pity her. It asks you to look at her, the way Karthi finally does.

- Ends