Cast: Manikandan Kabali, Sri Gouri Priya, Kanna Ravi, Harish Kumar, Saravanan, Geetha Kailasam, Harini, Nikhila Shankar
Crew:
Music by Sean Roldan
Cinematography by Shreyaas Krishna
Editing by Barath Vikraman
Written & Directed by Prabhuram Vyas
Produced by Yuvaraj Ganesan, Magesh Raj Pasilian, Nazerath Pasilian
True Lover Movie Rating: 2.5/5
The subject about love and the discussion about love between modern day couples have become interesting staple for new-age films. Like in the 90’s, when a new generation started watching films about then new-age romance with old age sensibilites, 2020’s are becoming more about such new-age romances. After 2010’s, where career became major talking point for the generation of films, this 20’s seem to be talking more about love. Bringing another story that talks about love and how it can be stragulent, True Lover, movie released on 10th February for Valentine’s Day. Let’s talk about the movie in detail.
Plot:
Divya(Sri Gouri Priya) struggles to learn surfing. She loves to travel frequently and enjoy nature. She keeps avoiding being filmed though. During a trip and a team dinner, she gets a call from her boy friend, Arun(Manikandan Kabali). She lies to him about her location. He starts asking her to send her location, so that, he can pick her up. She gets tensed up and they start fighting. Arun drinks alcohol and arrives at her flat to create a scene. He smashes car window as she walks away mid-fight and she rushes him to hospital. They rekindle their relationship as she feels guilty about lying to him. But she does that out of fear but not out of compulsion to lie to him.
He doesn’t understand why she fears him rather keep creating same rukcus again and again. She decides to leave him and break up their relationship. When she is unable to decide, Arun gets even more unbearable due to his continuous failures. While he is a good designer, he plans to start a cafe. He is unable to get funding from any investor and unable to find the right source. On top of that, Arun’s mother(Geetha Kailasam) decide to commit suicide due to her husband and Arun’s alcoholic and womanising father. What happens next? Will Arun understand why Divya is distancing him and why he is unable to be the backbone of his mother? Watch the movie to know more.
Analysis:
Manikandan Kabali again proves that he is a good performer with this film. He did a great job in Jai Bhim and Good Night. In a character that is dislikable from start to finish, he again excels in bringing out the complexity. He is able to keep an irritated face in every scene and is been able to show the contrast in ending parts. Sri Gouri Priya is highly likeable and she delievered a very believable performace. Being a Telugu girl, she seems to have been able to find very good and meaty role in Tamil, like many others. Her eyes speak volumes and if she fine tunes herself, she will definitely have a long career. She is able to perform in a comic film like MAD and this one, too in gap of six months. This shows her versatility, too. All others did well, mainly, Kanna Ravi and Geetha Kailasam leave an impact.
Sean Roldan has been able to hold the narrative together with his music. Songs are the highlight of this movie. While they don’t stand out, they do serve the purpose for the story-telling. Shreyaas Krishna’s visuals are good and they set the tone for the narrative as well. Color tones and grey shade helps the mood of the film. Barath Vikraman’s editing could have been much better in the second portion as few repetitive sequences become hassles in the pacing. Production values are adequate for the story and few portions are captured with an eye on aesthetics while keeping them real.
But the writing seems to run around in circles after establishing the conflict. The drama behind the real scenes needed more imaginative scenes for us to become the part of this couple’s life. We are not let completely inside of their life as we are only looking at Divya’s time with her friends and colleagues while Arun with his friends. We get to see them together very less but the movie needed to be about them more. How they are with each other when they don’t fight and how happy this relationship makes them needed much more time. But their relationship being toxic to Divya and breaking up gets more time and the scenes explaining those problems get repetitive.
Writing could have been much better with the scenes trying to concentrate on her issues and the steps she is taking to address them with him. The lack of any kind of trial from both sides to understand each other doesn’t give any other perspective. Prabhuram Vyas is able to get good performances and get all technical aspects also perfect. Had the portions of Gokarna trip and several over stretched portions been controlled then the movie would have been much better. Overall, movie is fine but it ends up being a watchable one but not a one that we cannot miss.
Positives:
Manikandan Performance
Sri Gouri Priya screen presence & Performance
Sean Roldan music
Shereyaas Krishna visuals
Negatives:
Repetitive scenes
Overstretched runtime
Story not moving forward for long time
Writing could have been better and crisp
True Lover Movie Bottom-line: Making a point again and again is also toxic.
