It was only later that I got to know that the woman who had fainted was my wife! (laughs) Seeing that, my friends joked about how my film was making everyone faint. On the day of the release, I was standing outside a theatre in Madurai when someone ran towards the canteen to get a soda because a woman had fainted after watching the climax. Even Kalaignar Karunanidhi saw the film and scolded me, asking how he could sleep after seeing the film (smiles).

After watching the film, they were so shocked that they advised me to change the climax and even said they were ready to fund it. Even before release, the film faced a couple of issues and I had to screen it for eight members from the Producers’ council. I’d never seen Yuvan in such an emotional state before and that told me that the climax worked.

After searching for him for a while, I saw him standing between a van and a wall, and he was crying. But after the film ended, I couldn’t spot him. He meddled with his phone in the first half at times and just said ‘okay ji’ during the intermission. I wanted the film to be better than Sethu and I’m glad it was.Īfter the film was shot, I played it to Yuvan Shankar Raja for the music. That’s when I narrated Paruthiveeran’s one-liner to him along with the climax. We were startled by how a film can affect the audience, and Sasi asked if we can come up with such a film.

Sasikumar and I were assistant directors back then and after a screening of Sethu in Madurai, we saw a woman come out, only to sit down on the ground and cry profusely. Paruthiveeran’s climax was not conceived during the scripting stage, but much earlier, when Sethu (1999) was released, in fact.

Paruthiveeran climax rape scene