Aadai (Eng: Clothes) is a 2019 Indian Tamil-language thriller film directed by Rathna Kumar and produced by Viji under the production banner V Studios. The film’s soundtrack is composed by Pradeep Kumar alongside the Oorka band (making their debut in film music direction). Aadai stars Amala Paul in the lead role. Released on 19 July 2019, Aadai opened to positive reviews from audience and critics.
Kamini (Amala Paul) is a media anchor with high spontaneity, courage and sense of her own feminist ideology. The character has no understanding of the dynamics between an ideology and freedom. She has been raised by a conservative mother after her father died when she was a child. Kamini and her mother (Sriranjini) are often at loggerheads about Kamini’s attitude. She, her friend Jennifer (Ramya Subramanian) and 4 male friends work as a team at the #tag channel, where they have been doing spoof pranks videos on unsuspecting people with serious topics, such as murder attempt, medical emergency, etc., for 3 years. On her birthday, Kamini’s mother challenges her to change into a conservative newsreader for at least once, so that she can be happy. Kamini’s firm is to vacate their building by the end of the day to their own building far away. As a sentiment, the last show to be telecasted from the old building is a live news feed, to be done by Jennifer. While Kamini visits Jennifer getting ready, their views about news reading bring a challenge to Kamini similar to what her mom said earlier. Suddenly Jennifer goes missing 10 minutes before the live feed and with no way out, Kamini serves as her replacement newsreader. Despite everyone’s expectation, Kamini does the job well, and Jennifer comes out of the upper floor toilet whose door got stuck. The firm vacates the building and the empty building is left without being locked for the weekend.
Kamini’s gang celebrates her birthday party with alcohol and a fried rice mixed with magic mushrooms in their empty office building. While on a call with her mom, Kamini unwittingly reveals that she was the one who locked Jennifer so that she could prove her point. Jennifer fights with Kamini and challenges her to her own statement of reading news naked. Kamini begins to strip, and suddenly everyone gets high on the magic mushrooms.
Kamini wakes up the next morning in the empty office with no dress and no telephone. Nothing viable is available for Kamini to dress herself and she spends the day naked, trying to get help in insensible ways. She gets hold of her phone, but it has another sim card which is not having balance to make outgoing. She calls food order on a toll-free number and waits. Kamini arms herself with an iron peg to attack the expected delivery guy and obtain his clothes, but gets surprised to see a delivery girl, who faints and loses consciousness due to blood loss. Then she tries to remove her clothes but the delivery girl wakes up and restrains and so Kamini hits her on the head and scampers off hearing the sounds of two local area guys who enter the building and come to Kamini’s floor. The guys find the delivery girl and call the police assuming she is dead. Kamini manages to hide from the police, but the police save the girl who had fainted. Kamini is left alone in the building after the police go away. She gets a call from one of her friends who reveals that they were arrested by the police the previous night since they were high. But before she can say anything her phone dies. She ventures out in the deep night, to a garbage bin outside but she’s chased by dogs before she could find anything good to cover herself. She runs back to the abandoned building still being chased by a dog and locks herself in the toilet. Finally she finds a tissue roll in the toilet which she uses to cover her private parts. She comes out of the building but finds herself stranded in the rain. She finds a police tape and covers herself and begs for a passerby to help her. But the passerby is the same delivery girl who was attacked earlier and she reveals that she is the reason for Kamini’s naked misery.
The delivery girl, Nangeli (Ananya Ramaprasad) was a Civil Services aspirant from a tribal village in Manjolai Hills and had passed the UPSC Preliminary examination 2 years ago. She was sent to Chennai by her Family for the UPSC Mains Examination. While she was waiting for an Auto, Kamini’s gang played a medical-oriented prank on her, causing her to miss out her Civil Service Mains examination and wasting her Preliminary exam marks forever. Also, when the girl’s mother came to Chennai for the next year examination, she fainted and no one came to help, thinking it as a prank. Nangeli is forced to work as a delivery girl while preparing for the exam again, while she saw Kamini one day after delivering food to her office. She sees Kamini enjoying her life.
Nangeli was hurt badly so she played out her revenge. She followed Kamini and saw her and her friends having fun in the empty office building. She hears Kamini tell her friends that she can stay naked in the building for a day. She sees Kamini walking to the restroom and also hears her friends going out to get more drinks. She finds Kamini passed out in the restroom and her friend Jennifer passed out as well. Nangeli gets Jennifer’s mobile and calls her dad. She asks him to pick her up as she is drunk and passed out. After Jennifer is taken away, Nangeli cleans the entire office and strips the office off everything. She then removes Kamini’s clothes and hides in an air vent to see Kamini’s reactions. Throughout the entire time Kamini was awake in the building, Nangeli was keeping a close watch on her. She heard Kamini order food and runs out and pays the delivery boy and pretends to be the delivery person instead. Before this, she also sees a blood donation bus and donates blood. That’s why she fainted. That’s when the remainder of the story happens. Then Nangeli reveals how social media has created a dangerous world where a selfie or even pranks are more important nowadays. Kamini asks if it’s her show’s fault that everyone in the world is crazy about social media. Nangeli reveals that we all have freedom but it shouldn’t be misused or taken advantage of and Kamini realises her mistake. Nangeli reveals she didn’t want to take revenge but just wanted her to know what Kamini had done to her. She explains how irrespective of Kamini hurting her, she ran away from the hospital and the cops outside to know if she was safe. Nangeli is also upset seeing how Kamini is hurt because stepping on glass and running from the dogs. She apologized to Kamini and the two go their separate ways. Kamini changes from public pranks to exposing scandals of politicians in office. She is shown to be the cause for the dismissal and arrest of a songwriter who was a member of parliament. Nangeli is still preparing for her exams and working as a delivery person.
Directed by Rathna Kumar
Produced by Viji Subramaniyan
Written by Rathna Kumar
Starring Amala Paul, Vivek Prasanna, Ramya Subramanian
Music by Pradeep Kumar & Oorka
Cinematography Vijay Karthik Kannan
Edited by Shafique Mohammed Ali
Production SK Studios
Distributed by Srii Umayal Films
Release date 19 July 2019
Running time 199 minutes
Country India
Language Tamil
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