To be honest, Karthik Subbaraj's Iraivi didn't appeal to me on the whole. The film's conceit depended on polarizing the masculine and the feminine, and though it was a novel attempt to look at the lives of women through male eyes, it didn't work for me.
While the characters of Yazhini (Kamalini Mukherjee) and Malarvizhi (Pooja Devariya) fell back on the same old-new portrayals of sacrifice, martyrdom, and "virtue" when it comes to women, Ponni (Anjali) was far more real.
The feisty Anjali did a convincing job, playing the role of a small town woman who has no ambitions in life other than to get married. She ends up in a loveless marriage and must negotiate her way through it with clever chess moves, even as she keeps social facades intact.