Love Is All Around

Modern Love: Chennai| Cast: TJ Bhanu, Ritu Varma, Vaibhav Reddy, Ashok Selvan, Kishore Creator: Thiagarajan Kumararaja | Tamil | Prime Video

The man is sitting by the window in the living room, clad in his veshti. The woman is in a baby pink night suit, complete with a heavily made-up visage. It starts raining and they both decide to dance without the music playing. Goofy to outsiders, but it bonds them. “’90s kids still have hope,” thinks the husband (Vaibhav Reddy) as he places his wet feet alongside that of his wife (the refreshing Ritu Varma). Two romantics, brought up on R Madhavan movies and AR Rahman songs, find each other even though the film critic (Baradwaj Rangan in a sweet cameo) has just broken her cinema-loving heart by quoting Jean-Luc Godard: “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud on earth.” Her response to him: “You’re just an English-speaking man in a blue shirt.” ‘Kaadhal Enbadhu Kannula Heart Irukkura Emoji’ is one of the six short films on love in an excellent anthology. In ‘Paravai Kootil Vaazhum Maangal’, a man (the superb Kishore) answers a phone belonging to a woman sitting next to him in the metro because it carries his ringtone. They become close. It leads to one of the most insightful and civilised expositions on marriage and divorce I’ve seen, quite expected as this segment is directed by the great Bharathiraja. Who knows why, how and with whom we will fall in love, wonders Kishore. In another short, ‘Imaigal’, a husband introduces his wife to the joy of music as she progressively loses her eyesight. And in another, ‘Ninaivo Oru Paravai’, a woman has to walk her ex through the milestones of their relationship so he can regain his memory. Love is everywhere but not in the touristy, picture-postcard Chennai, but in a Chennai of the cultural imagination, its music, movies, travel, faith. And in its men and women, they can’t live with each other, and can’t live without each other.

Why Watch It: To remind us of the shock, the awe and sometimes the sheer audacity of love

Light Noir

Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery| Cast: Sanya Malhotra, Vijay Raaz, Rajpal Yadav | Director: Yashowardhan Mishra Hindi | Netflix

This is the season for missing girls and missing fruit, and Kathal is a satire that tells us exactly what society values more. It is the same theme that Dahaad covered on Prime Video in an extended sombre version, but Kathal serves a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Sanya Malhotra is the lower caste police inspector in the fictional small town of Moba who is clearly smart, sharp and altogether more empathetic than her boyfriend, who has remained a constable. “Body banane se police officer nahin ban jate (You don’t become a police officer by building muscles),” she tells him in a heated moment when she sees him beating up a poor family, her sense of justice offended. She understands the social commentary on young girls, wearing ripped jeans, and trying to live their lives with freedom. She also understands that her own caste status is a problem for many. But she is here to do a job and in her own way, make small changes, even if it is to berate the husband of her female subordinate who expects his wife to cook for his friend after a long day at work. “She doesn’t do any work here, right,” she tells the clueless husband.

Why watch it? For some fine acting, not in the least by Rajpal Yadav playing a small-time journalist who believes in being first with the news, even if he himself becomes the headline

entertainmentKathal: A Jackfruit MysteryModern Love: ChennaiNetflixPrime Videostreaming business