Srinivasa Ramanujam

We’ve seen way too much amma sentiment in Tamil films for us to fall for it immediately. And yet, Nooru Sami, within ten minutes into its screentime, manages to do that. We don’t even know the characters well yet; all we realise is that two young children are being sent by their mother off to a hostel to pursue education, much against their wishes. The two throw tantrums, refuse to get on to the bus, and look teary-eyed at their mother, who just cannot look into their eyes to bid goodbye. She turns back, unable to process the look on their forlorn faces. She closes her eyes and clutches her chest, almost as if the entire world were resting on it. It’s a scene Selvi (Swasika) sells immediately. You almost wish the rest of the film had emotional heft like this. Alas, it doesn’t.

It’s a late night in the early Nineties in Tamil Nadu’s Thiruverumbur. Even as everyone is settling into slumber, Karasaami (Dhanush) is perched on a tree, keeping watch on a locked house. When the time seems right, Kara and his apprentice (played by Prithvi Pandiarajan) break in. Just as they are about to seal the deal, they hear someone at the gate. It’s the perfect start for a heist film – one in which the director wastes no time in the frills associated with regular commercial cinema fare. In fact, the protagonist appears within a couple of seconds of the film opening, a healthy sign that we are in for a pure genre film, rather than meander into formulaic elements. This sign strengthens with the introduction of DSP Bharathan (Suraj Venjaramoodu), who promises to close this case as soon as possible.

If you said his comical expressions and reactions, you’d be mostly right. From Friends to Vetrikodi Kattu, Vadivelu’s body language and facial expressions when delivering funny lines have filled awkward silences in many drawing rooms as they play out on television. This continues to date on Tamil comedy channels. In Maareesan, his latest feature, written by V. Krishna Moorthy and directed by Sudheesh Sankar, Vadivelu sheds all those strengths. Here, he’s Velayudham, an Alzheimer’s patient who has largely forgotten his past. In his introduction sequence, he is chained and calling out to someone whom he thinks is his son.

Pray, what is love? Is it in the initial attraction that happens between two individuals? Is it in the sweet nothings that they share?

A few years ago, in 2022, came along a nondescript Tamil film titled Kuruthi Aatam, starring Atharvaa. I wrote in my review about this sophomore film from 8 Thotakkal filmmaker Sri Ganesh: “The biggest problem of Kuruthi Aattam is its desire to pack many things into its already-long 149-minute narrative. There’s just too much happening too soon here.” With his latest film, 3BHK,Sri Ganesh sorts this issue out. The first sequence gets you right into the story — and this elaborates what the trailer already beautifully showcased — Vasudevan (Sarath Kumar) and his family want to build a home. Can they? This 140-minute cinematic effort goes into answering this singular question. And as it does that, it veers into the individual journeys of the lead characters — Vasudevan (Sarath Kumar), Prabhu (Siddharth), Shanthi (Devayani) and Aarthi (Meetha Ragunath).

A family is trying to flee Sri Lanka and lands up in Rameshwaram, only to get noticed by the cops. They are picked up in a police van. The mood is sombre. But what follows is a really funny five-minute sequence that sets the tone for the entire film. It can be argued that Dharmadas (Sasikumar) is this movie’s hero, but the script does not have a single protagonist; rather, it’s this entire family of four that forms the fulcrum of the script. Director Abishan Jeevinth’s Tourist Family is all about boundaries and ways to break them. A Sri Lankan family with fake documentation has arrived in a Chennai colony, which has, among other people, a grumpy man who rarely socialises, a drunkard who keeps getting yelled at, and a girl wanting to move abroad but changing her mind. That all these characters live together and are close-knit makes things interesting. Remember director Radha Mohan’s Mozhi? The first half of Tourist Family reminds one of that 2007 Tamil film, just in terms of feeling and flavour.

The opening stretch of Raghu Thathatakes us back to the ‘60s. Even as the opening credits roll, we are shown newspaper clippings of important developments in that period. Anti-Hindi slogans and protests are rampant in Tamil Nadu, a state that is furiously vocal against the imposition of Hindi. Indira Gandhi has taken over as the first woman Prime Minister of the country, something that should ideally given women across the country a lot more confidence and freedom.

Early in Minmini, inside a school during a chilly evening at Ooty, a candle goes off. A student offers to light it up with his candle. “When one candle lights up another, there’s no loss,” someone remarks.