Mupparimanam Movie Review

Language: Tamil

Director: Adhiroopan

Cast: Shanthnu Bhagyaraj, Srushti Dange

Just another love story, we think at first. The girl, Anusha (Srushti Dange), is about to be married off to someone else. The boy, Kadhir (Shanthnu Bhagyaraj), lands up at the venue with a gun. He leaves with her. There's a chase. There's an accident.

There's cliché. There are hints of enmity between the two families. We witness, in a flashback, an honour killing – Anusha's aunt is killed because she eloped with a man she liked. The early portions of Adhiroopan's Mupparimanam (Three Dimensions) prime us for a particular kind of movie – and then it pulls the rug from under our feet.

At a story level, the film is never less than fascinating. Kadhir's sacrifice (keeping in mind Anusha's well-being) backfires badly. He becomes a druggie.

It comes as no surprise that Adhiroopan once assisted Bala – the air is thick with portents of doom. I also thought of Guna, where Kamal Haasan played an obsessed man whose obsessions trigger off a series of cataclysms. However, there's a difference. Anusha loves Kadhir, but…

This "but" makes the story. It has to do with how some of us are simply human, how we fall prey to temptation, how sometimes the nice and shiny thing becomes a bigger priority than the right thing.

The screenplay, alas, does the film no favours. We should care for Anusha and Kadhir as much as they care for each other, but the romance is too generic. And there are too many shifts in the timeline. No single mood is nurtured – we feel constantly disoriented. By the time we get to a celebratory song with Kollywood film stars making cameo appearances, all hope for a coherent narrative vanishes. The leads put in valiant performances, but a film with so much love and loss should have made us feel so much more.