Thoongaavanam, which should have been done and dusted in 90 minutes, is dragged to fit the conventional time-expectations of the Indian audience. The French film’s script doesn’t stick with the three-part film grammar, which is prevalent here. The interval block becomes fatal to the flow of the film.

It is remarkable that Kamal continues to unfailingly make films that are different but there is a fundamental fault in many of his recent films: he doesn’t respect the intellectual capacity of his audience. He treats them almost like idiots and misjudges the capacity of the audience of today, esp­ecially of Tamil films (obviously, he doesn’t read reviews of his films either!). At the end of the movie, I felt like saying ‘so near and yet so far’.