Vishal Menon

How much does a young boy have to go through to be allowed the freedom to have an emotional breakdown? When we first meet Mithya (Athish Shetty), what we see is his back turned towards us as he travels on a train from somewhere to somewhere else. We later learn that he’s not travelling out of choice. He’s being displaced from his home in Mumbai to Udipi in Southern Karnataka where he will live with his uncle, aunt and their two daughters. Like Mithya, the film about him too has its back turned towards us. It’s not a film that grants you the solace of having empathised with its broken protagonist. Instead, it reveals these broken pieces so sparsely that we feel as lost and helpless as he does.

The first 30 minutes of Kadhal Enbadhu Podhu Udamai (Love Is Common Property) is not an easy film to sit through. It’s frothy and hollow and you’d be surprised that you’re watching the work of writer-director Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan, known for intense psychological dramas such as Lens (2016) and Thalaikoothal (2023). It begins with Sam (Lijomol Jose) confessing to her mother (Rohini) that she’s in love and wants her to meet this person. With the flowery set-up you’d find in silly rom-coms, we get scene after painful scene of the mother, preparing to welcome her future son-in-law. We learn that they hail from the upper middle class, and we also learn that Sam’s parents separated years ago. The film uses this time to introduce us to a handful of characters, including Sam’s father (Vineeth), Sam’s bestie Ravi (Kalesh) and Deepa (Deepa Shankar), the cook who is more than family.

In Sreejith Babu’s debut Painkili, cringe isn’t the after-effect as much as it is the aesthetic the film aspires for. It is self-aware and loud and made by a director with such an original style that he hasn’t yet found ways to bring it under control. How else would you describe some of the wild ideas that are dime a dozen? Take the example of a character named Jaffer, one of the many “gundas” in the film. Not only does Jaffer introduce himself each time he runs into a friend, but he goes on to call everyone around him Jaffer too. It doesn’t make any sense and oftentimes ideas like these are so strange that we’re unsure if we’re expected to laugh or wince. But in the odd instance one of these wild swings begin to make sense, it’s next to impossible to stop laughing.

There are lovely additions Magizh Thirumeni makes to Breakdown (1997) to humanise what was otherwise a straightforward Hollywood action movie. This begins right with the way he re-interprets the title ‘Breakdown’. Not only does this mean that Magizh’s version begins way before Arjun’s (Ajith Kumar) car breaks down in the middle of nowhere as he travels with his wife to Tbilisi, but the title also alludes to the ‘breakdown’ they are experiencing in their marriage. It’s middle of the road in a sense, but the not the kind you’re thinking about. They’ve been together for 12 years and they’ve lost the magic that had once brought them together. In another awkward meet-cute that we’ve now come to expect from Magizh Thirumeni, we’re told that Arjun once sent “Happy Birthday” messages every day to Kayal (Trisha) for six consecutive months. But after 12 years, Arjun doesn’t even remember the date anymore, even when the world stays up to wish Kayal.

10 minutes into Gautham Vasudev Menon’s Dominic And The Ladies’ Purse is all it takes for one to fall in love with CI Dominic (Mammootty), the eccentric, pompous detective with a serious cash-flow issue. We meet him through Vicky (Gokul Suresh), Dominic’s new “Watson” on his first day of work, in what can best be described as a “zero introduction” scene. Dominic works out of his dilapidated home-office filled with props and furniture (his office chair is an abandoned salon seat) well past its glory days. So when he hires Vicky in a matter of seconds, it’s probably not because he’s finally found an intellectual equal, it’s just that Vicky has enough money at home to not ask for a salary.

Speaking purely as a whodunit that begins with the discovery of an unidentified corpse, Rekhachithram is particularly pedestrian. The movie starts with a confession, and we cut to a person who could predictably be one of the murderers. It is not a film written for suspense or leading towards one major climactic twist. Still, nothing prepares you the way Rekhachithram takes you deep into a crime that took place so long ago — back when Mammootty hadn’t yet become the megastar he is today. This is partly because the whodunit is always in service of a spectacular amount of cinephilia. Right from the title font which reminds you of classic ‘80s cinema (as though Bharathan himself was the calligrapher) to the way the lost art of fan mail gets integrated into this crime, the love for cinema isn’t merely a flavour in Rekhachithram as much as it is a part of its soul. Even the wordplay of its title, which could be read both as “composite sketch” as well a movie about Rekha, reveals the film’s dual personalities.

Right from the casting of the delightful Nithya Menen as Shriya, to the picture-perfect houses; from AR Rahman’s youthful score to the way these songs are shot, coded in shades of red and blue; there’s a dotingly recreated design in Kadhalikka Neramillai that is meant to evoke Mani Ratnam’s O Kadhal Kanmani (2015). Like the 2015 romance, Kiruthiga Udhayanadhi’s film also is set around two hyper-individualistic protagonists, each with their own sets of rules and quirks. If OKK was about a couple that was marriage-averse, Kadhalikka Neramillai is about two people who do not believe in commitment. But what if you add an extra layer of conflict into their midst by throwing in the idea of having children? That is what makes Kadhalikka Neramillai a cultural update of O Kadhal Kanmani, like a thought exercise that was born when someone mooted, “What if Tara and Aditya from OKK met, but later, when they are in their 30s?” It’s this bit of tweaking that makes for a more complex film. In a casual breakfast scene set at Shriya’s house, we see her correcting her mother (lovingly called Kanmani!) when she assumes Shriya to still be a virgin. This isn’t a movie about glossy love-at-first-sight moments or syrupy meet-cutes. Well into their adult lives, both Sid (Ravi Mohan) and Shriya (Nithya Menen) have been through enough heartbreaks to realise that love is… a matter of time.