This season, two films on live-in relationships released and everyone went: Not bad, Indian cinema is getting progressive.
Is it really??
Having seen both Salaam Namaste and Anbe Aaruyire, I can’t help but be dissappointed.
As already mentioned in my review, Salaam Namaste reduces the issue of live-in relationship to complications of pre-marital sex. And Anbe Aaruyire, inspite of the ugly as hell S.J.Suryah, is surprisingly more convincing, though it does skirt the issue of sex and ironically at that, behind a dozen double entendres.
Before you think I like the movie, let me say I find the idea of S.J.Suryah as a stud protagonist disgusting. Cheran played an ordinary guy in ‘Autograph’ and he was convincing at that. But here, that comedian guy Santhanam looks much more talented and smarter than Suryah. Suryah by no standards qualifies as a stud (he wants us to believe his pretty colleague would do anything to sleep with him), he cannot act for nuts, his voice modulation totally sucks and his shameless copying of Superstar’s finger language is a big turn off.
He’s certainly a director with potential as ‘Khushi’ revealed. While ‘Khushi’ dealth with ego in relationships, ‘Ah Aah’ deals with trust. Though I do appreciate the idea and the premise of the film, it’s in the execution that I think he’s goofed up.
Firstly, no relationship makes sense with S.J.Suryah in it. ha ha!
Even if I were to put my bias against Suryah away for a moment and try to appreciate the film, all I can only credit him is for choosing to explore trust in a relationship, though it is a half-baked and lost in the director’s indulgence as an actor. After a decent set-up of the conflict in the first half of the film, you would think that the film will go deeper into the issue. Instead, he resorts to fantasy and a double role by personifying his memories of her and her memories of his and loses the plot in the interplay between these four characters.
And what’s the idea of giving these fantasy characters special powers of being able to blow curtains and photoframes? Caught between fantasy and realism, Ah Aah loses its way through the second half, especially using three songs in the space of 25 minutes after interval. Double-meaning lines alone aren’t enough to make a film entertaining. It seems to be a criminal waste of a plot when the freshness in the idea is lost in the exhibition of indulgence.
Maybe Suryah should concentrate in direction and scriptwriting and let a more capable actor do the acting. Because, there surely was more potential in ‘Ah Aah’ than what came out. Besides, there are very few filmmakers who choose to explore contemporary boy-girl relationships in Tamil films.
Where does living in fit into the whole scheme of things? No where. The lovers (eeeks, I hate the word) would have had the same problems even if they lived separately. Then why put them under the same house? To just suggest intimacy. If they were that intimate and close, would they still have a problem of trust? And how about telling us a little more on what led to the relationship and how did they adapt to living in together in the first place? Why the ambiguity in role of sex? Do they resist or give in to the temptation? If the director can show us that he dresses her up in the saree and gives her a bath in the tub, why doesn’t he just cut to the chase and tell us if they did do it or not? And the complication of sex in live-in relationships?
It is the immaturity with which Siddharth Anand and S.J.Suryah have handled live-in relationships that is disppointing. Both the films had enormous potential. A relationship itself is complex, why further complicate it by making the films about live-in relationships?
I don’t understand. Why make them live-in if you don’t have the balls to tell us the true story of live-in relationships with their glorious complications?
MADRAS INK. 