LOVER – MY 2 PAISA TAKE

 Lover – the Tamil film has the most generic name that can be given to a movie as title. Every other film that comes out today is about a lover or two, so a movie made with a such a title must justify itself that it deserves the title more than the other films, right? Does it do that? In parts, yes.

The film stars Manikandan, who plays, rather lives in the character of an unemployed twenty something and Sri Gowri Priya, who plays the role of an IT industry employee, both of whom are in ‘love(?)’. The conflicts that arise between them due to the class inequalities and the lifestyle incompatibility and the way they navigate through it forms the rest of the story. 

From the beginning of the movie, Manikandan’s character is shown in a way that gives the audience glimpses of Arjun Reddy, only that this time, the character is set in reality rather than a hero worshipping Utopian setup. Manikandan’s character has anger issues; lots of them. He drinks, gets into brawls with his girlfriend and the closest of his friends, his family. He loses his temper at some of the smallest of the things, gets triggered at the others. He aspires to open a modern cafe in Chennai and loafs around with certain powerful people for financial help, and has little to no interest in pursuing a career with his designing skills, something in which he is good at. He also hails from a lower middle class family with a lower middle class mindset, something that the film wants to strongly convey us with the way certain sequences are made and placed.

Gowri’s character on the other hand, works in an IT company with its posh office setups, lives in a well polished apartment, has people around her who are young, open, way too friendly, show themselves as progressive, trendy -  traits one can associate with the average IT crowd in a big city. They go to posh drinking places (read as night clubs), while Manikandan and his friends go to the local bars (read as wineshops). 

Conflicts arise between these two lead characters naturally due to their lifestyle differences – which get bigger and bigger with every passing day in their lives. The film’s story as an idea is so relevant to today’s youth society. The making only supplements it. Both the actors in the lead roles have given what is required for the roles in the right quantities, the chemistry(?) between them in the setup of a conflicted relationship has nothing to long for. Pitch perfect. Right on the mark. But, there are problems. Some more bigger than the others, and most of them have to be attributed to the way the movie has been made – in other words, the implicit ideas that it stuffs the audience’s minds with. For example, there is a sequence in the movie where the lead lady and her friends go on to buy some weed and the lead man just happens to be going with the guy who sells weed to her friends. But the sheer amount of disparity in the portrayal of perspectives there agitates us from the inside. The fact that the making not only sees no problem with the lady and her friends buying weed to smoke, but throws a poor light on the hero who just happens to be at the scene gives us chances to question ourselves the way society must be, for a director to show such a massive tint shift just by perspectives. Or maybe, that is exactly what the director would have wanted us to feel? I wouldn’t have a clue anyway.

The film feels draggy. The second half of the movie feels severely lengthy, most of the times unnecessarily. Audience would have most often felt that certain places could have been shortened or taken off altogether as they add very little value to the overall production, but do more damage than it would have been intended. The music by Sean Roldan, unfortunately again is forgettable. The background music complements the movie flow, no complaints or whatsoever there, but the songs do not stick to us once we leave the cinema hall. With the amount of movies Sean has been getting recently, he should take the most of his chances and give us another Thala Kodhum or Venpani Malare. 

Diamonds for the lover?

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