Kiruthiga Udhayanidhi's 'Kadhalikka Neramillai' is a warm breezy film about contemporary relationships, albeit scratching the surface at so many things, comes with a lot of pleasant surprises. The film attempts to discuss the issues in new age independent relationships and that's where it gets the brownie points, but also where the film stumbles.
The film is really well shot. There is always a sense of sophistication, be it the colours that scream white, teal, lavender, surprisingly a song named Lavender. The frames are soft and delicate, the conversations are natural and there are new situations around which scenes are built. This is a rare film, where we don't get to see those 'built-up' moments for the soulmates to meet or the universe to make them meet. These moments happen just like any other day, but the scenes play out in a more interesting and fresh manner. There is a nice little play with the professions of the lead characters. Both of them are part of construction and architecture and they just couldn't find a proper chance to build a proper love story is a sweet choice.
The narrative is bold enough to discuss many themes, and the fact that these are discussed without much emphasis helps the story to move forward. A major plus for the film is that, the screenplay and story are more focused. For a love story, the film feels utterly real and rarely does it feel artificial, like in a proposal scene, we see the acceptance in just the opposite person finding a shoulder to lean on, without any conditions laid. The conversations feel real and they feel very organic.
The two halves, though feel like 2 different films, given that the characters change in a brief manner. The latter half feels a bit less coherent than the first half, even when it doesn't cause much of an issue in the narrative. We get a character who is established as an LGBTQ, and we feel some time should have been spent on that character. We get another character who leaves the protagonist much earlier, and we feel some focus on her could have given a much more clean closure to her.
AR Rahman does the heavy work for the most part, and his songs are a breath of fresh air. The narrative is primarily shouldered by the brilliant Jayam Ravi and Nithya Menon duo, making their characters look so natural. The typical structure for a romantic film is subverted with some smart tweaks and diversions, lending some novelty. While it does fall prey to some cliches and some wayward quirks, the screenplay is clean enough to break many stereotypes, giving us newer scenes and situations to savour on.
Kadhalikka Neramillai is a much needed breath of fresh air, both in terms of the rom-com genre as well as for the industry. The breezy, uber cool nature of the film, handling mature themes makes it a very unconventional add-on to the romantic genre, even when it does leave some things and merely scratches the surface on certain characters.
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