Avinash Ramachandran

There is a quaint Christian fishing hamlet. There is a raging sea at their footsteps. The villagers haven’t gone fishing in their waters for over two decades. Every single person who has gone out to the sea has come back dead. There is a curse. There is a reasoning. There are overarching themes involving regret, retribution, and redemption. There is a romance track that, thankfully, exists in the periphery. There is a to-and-fro between timelines that moves from the 80s to the 2020s to the 2010s to the 60s to the 80s, and you know the drill. There are multiple backstories for each principal player of this story. There is a folklore. There is a fantasy element, and then… there’s a sea creature. And yet, for the longest time, GV Prakash Kumar‘s latest film, Kingston, seems to move nowhere, and this proves to be the film’s biggest undoing.

Gentlewoman starts off as a tale about a gentle woman. She wakes up. She makes coffee. She has her bath. She wears her saree. She cooks. She packs. Her husband wakes up, prays to God, and gets ready for work. He reads philosophy. On the outset, he is that perfect husband. But scratch just a couple of layers, we understand that he has made her a creature of habit. She wakes up, makes coffee, has her bath, wears her saree, cooks, packs, and also has to stand in the balcony and bid him goodbye as he leaves for work. But what does he do for her? Well, never once in the film does he do anything for her. And this is not registered by an elaborate scene, but just a simple callback that is effective and subtle. Probably why when director Joshua Sethuraman suddenly decides to get all preachy and rub our faces in the film’s ideology with verbose monologues, and random conversations that feel out of place in this world, it feels like a let-down.

If one is good only because of the fear of repercussions, are they really good people? If one is disillusioned with the idea of being perfect, wants to live life on the fly, make mistakes and amends along the way, are they really bad people? Now, with most questions regarding the existential crisis of being a good person in a seemingly bad world, these also don’t have concrete answers. Director Ashwath Marimuthu attempts to tell a story of a guy who descends into the depths of depravity only to find the shortest of ropes to hold on and crawl back to redemption. A guy named D Ragavan aka Dragon.

In romantic comedies, more often than not, everything boils down to choices. Do the hero/heroine choose to love the right person? Does that person love them back at the right time? Do parents choose to accept the love stories of their children? Does the couple still manage to choose love over every other distraction coming their way? And the most important question of them all… Does the writer of the film choose the right hero/heroine’s friend? We have seen Santhanam play this role to perfection in multiple films. And in Dhanush’s Nilavukku Enmel Ennadi Kobam, this thankless job is done by Mathew Thomas, who plays Rajesh, the rather generic friend with a generic name with an all-round generic disposition that gets constantly subverted thanks to his electrifying performance.

In Anbe Sivam, Madhavan’s Anbarasu, who coerces his friend Sivam, to become his brother figure of sorts, says, “Idhenna kaadhala, asingama sollitte irukkardhukku… (This isn’t love. Why should we keep on announcing it to the world?)” It was a poignant scene about the importance of understanding love without putting it in words. But it was also a reminder that love for one another has to be expressed repeatedly. Why? It is not to just create a sense of acknowledgement about the relationship. It is also to create an example for many others who might think their love isn’t right, or they are not destined for love, or they are not deserving of love. That is why all kinds of love need to be showcased for all to see. And that is why Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan’s Kadhal Enbadhu Podhu Udamai is an important film in Tamil cinema.

The hero of Laila is called Sonu Model (Vishwak Sen). He is a salon owner, and a specialist in women’s makeup. He is said to be the to-go stylist for every woman in that neighbourhood, but the salon is tacky to a fault. And he is unnecessarily confusing his ‘Mass ka Das’ persona with the character of Sonu, and being a walking talking annoyance. We’ll get back to him in a while. The heroine of Laila is called Jenny. She is a physical trainer in a gym. She also takes classes in public parks. She only wears tight-fitting clothes, and it is par for the course considering her profession. The makers want to only feature her in certain frames, and certain close-ups to appeal to us, the common people whose only reason to watch films is to satiate our depravity. What? You never asked for it? And yet, they are doing it in the garb of appealing to mass audience. We’ll get back to her in a while.

We’ve always heard that distance makes heart grow fonder. But very rarely is this showcased with as much pining and soul as Chandoo Mondeti does in Thandel. With the ever-dependable Sai Pallavi playing Sathya and a highly efficient Naga Chaitanya playing Raju, Chandoo weaves a tale of romance that blossoms over the cracks in voices, the fragrance of a worn shirt, and the wind caressing a flag tied to a lighthouse. The elements are the witness to this love story that finds itself thriving in the analog even during the digital era. It is beautiful how Sathya even looks at Raju. There is a wonderful mix of reverence, romance, exasperation, and a weird sense of contentment that she exudes in her eyes whenever she is around Raju, who wonderfully showcases vulnerability that can only be seen in a heartfelt romance. As long as Thandel focusses on the ups and downs of this relationship, it sails quite smoothly. But the moment the film enters the murky waters of Pakistan, Thandel throws restraint to the wind, and turn into a heroic tale of unlikely heroes, whose sorrow gets lost in the heroism.

Ajith Kumar’s Arjun isn’t a “hero” by any stretch of the imagination, especially in the Tamil cinema ecosystem. In fact, if the film wasn’t a gripping action drama, Arjun would have been a certified loser with nothing going for him. In fact, even in this movie, for a really long time, Arjun is never a facilitator of action, but just a responder to the consequence. And that’s what makes it all the more special because it is an action film featuring one of the biggest stars of Tamil cinema, and it features a star stripped of all his stardom… almost. Magizh Thirumeni takes the premise of the 1997 film, Breakdown, and remains largely faithful to the plot, giving it a few necessary changes to suit Indian sensibilities. And the most important change is in the relationship dynamics between Arjun and his wife Kayal (Trisha), which adds gravitas to this equation that drives large portions of the film. The movie starts off by establishing the romance between the couple and the gradual falling out that happens over years of marriage. We are shown glimpses of their journey, right from the first meet-cute to falling heads over heels in love to the first cracks in the relationship, and the seemingly irreparable ones. And point to Magizh and editor NB Srikanth for deciding to tell all these through two beautiful Anirudh Ravichander numbers to ensure the pacing isn’t sacrificed for showcasing the romance part.