Is selvaraghavan joining the band of ''FACE-SAVING PEOPLE''???
(of otherwise highly unmotivated tamil cine world)
let's see after the release of 7G Rainbow Colony..
this movie is one very good effort from a director doin only his second movie...
and that too in a time when everybody is churning out o-podu's and manmadharasa's...
somehow or the other I felt thulluvatho ilamai was wrongly propagated as a soft-porn movie.... (as I havent seen the movie yet, I can only feel that it's not so)
in kadhal kondaen the lead character is vinod(played very well by dhanush), a boy who has been brought up in a church....
he doesnt want to mingle with outer world... and when he is forced to do so by his mentor (Nagesh).. he gets an admission into a college in chennai....
dhivya, who also studies in the college, becomes a good buddy of his, and she is the only person who lends a hand of friendship to him, which causes love to blossom in vinod's heart. and he goes to all extents to win her over...
this is the plot in a capsule...
the director deserves the first applause along with the cinematographer (aravind krishna, the one who played the ''dhanush'' badhri looks for in kuruthippunal)...
the special-mentions are the following sequences
vinod solving the problem on the board bowling his prof. over,
the rendition of the piece (''kaalangal thorum..'') of the song (''nenjodu kalandhidu...''),
the theme music playin in the background when he rampages over dhivya's lover (what's his name in the movie???)
Vinod (as a small boy) throwing mosaic stone on the head of the firm owner, and all the other children doin the same without uttering a word!
dhanush is refreshing. the scenes in the classroom (silently coming back to his desk ad lying down!), jungle (''en thappu thaanda. naanum unna maathiri pazham kedacha odane, vaayila pottu sappittirukkanum.. adha vittuttu pathukkitae irunthuttaen..'', ''aadhi maela unakku irukkiradhu love'nu nenaikkira? illa dhivya....'', are some samples of well-spoken dialogues) are some good examples.
his disliking about sex is well-explained and well-enacted...
the flashback is heart-wrenching.... and it doesnt shy away from the truth, and it should be considered as one of the boldest sequences taken in tamil cinema...
there is no false reasoning whatsoever.. vinod's mother is a pros. and is not worried in the least in deliberately leaving her son in the mosaic factory, (''payyana paathu vayasu adhigam'nu nenaikkiraanga... adhaan ....'') rather than showing a pathini amma who accidentally happenned to leave her only boy behind and he thinking of amma all the time... Such mothers too exist in real world and is shown well here.
vinod and his childhood friend soak our hearts in their rough lives there....
now comin to the negative aspects...
the first half is loaded with lotsa senti on friendship....
ok.. we re in 21st century... men and women are equal.... and all that crap....
all said and done, we re still humans... and the relationship between dhivya and vinod cannot be just a friendship bond considering the level of intimacy they share.... she shaves for him, he hugs her when he successfully finishes his talk in the symposium, she's all tears after this....
what I mean is,
dhivya sympathises him for all his tribulations and helps him out...
but she herself cant fall in love with a guy like vinod for obvious reasons like it wont suit her style of life; he's not all that handsome; he will be a misfit in her society;
all these reasons are mundane, but still are more realstic. (now when one tells I dont consider all this while finding one's love, he is being hypocrytic)
so she's happy to see him happy and looks at him kindly from a distance....
this should be the real dhivya...
but our dhivya is the one who truly likes and would do anything for vinod, except ''loving'' him .....
and such a supposed-to-be-strong-minded girl falling in love with the other guy just because he saved her from being molested is not believable....
the scene in which she says after kissing him on his face, that ''ippadi naa aadhi kitta panniyirunthaa (yeah! I got his name), ennallaam panniruppaan theriyumaa?'', very slightly touches her attitude upon him...
but otherwise, she is angel-personified (even in the last scene, after all this sufferings she still doesnt let her hands go off vinod).
dhivya appears like an angel in vinod's life should have been from his point of view only... but she is shown as an absolute angel doin no wrong thing....
vinod being socially inept could have been shown as a reason for her to reject him, rather than reasoning that - 'he is a good friend. and I have already fallen in love with this aadhi and cant (or shud not) think of any other person'.
the writer falters here.
first half also has other distractions because of this aadhi character... the ''comic'' sequence in dhivya's house is awkward and so is aadhi (name : sudhip??)... and his songs too popping all of a sudden... (in fact I wud goto the extent of telling tht his character was not necessary at all... dhivya not loving vinod can be reasoned by any of the above-mentioned, rather than this...) what I mean he seems to be the loose end of what is otherwise a tight script. the scene in which vinod comes to propose to dhivya, but ends up as a mediator to the other two sitting at hell-of-a-close distance is one of the worst scenes in the movie.... the love scenes between aadhi and dhivya are boring. and so are those sub-plots involving dhivya's friends and dhivya's friend's boyfriend (one who tries to molest her later)
first half has quite an amount of such badly executed scenes
the second half is more relevant to vinod, and hence good
though some reviewers criticized the second half for containing more body content, it's obviously the better half and I dont mind in the least about the exposure if it's necessary.
Music by Yuvan is VERY GOOD.
among the cast dhanush stands tall amidst the other average and insipid performances.
(yes, I dint like sonia agarwal's performance to the least. it was passable considering that she had look like an angel, always. and sudhip looks stupid in most of his scenes and makes one wonder how dhivya falls in love with this guy)
Final Verdict is 3 STARS.
