To begin with, Pyaar Prema Kaadhal is Yuvan Shankar Raja’s musical. The film has 12 songs in total. The end credits, in fact, rolls with all these songs in order, crediting every department that had worked on it. Thankfully, the songs do not get excessive, but instead become one with the story.
Starring Harish Kalyan and Raiza of Bigg Boss fame, the film has been written and directed by Elan.
Pyaar Prema Kaadhal (PPK), as the name suggests, is a film on love. Harish plays Sree, a young man who is besotted with the woman (Raiza) who works in the building next to his office. Every morning, Sree rushes to work in time to spend the rest of the day gaping at her from his office window.
As the film would have it, Raiza joins his office, and this is when he finally gets to know her name - Sindhuja. While Sindhuja is unaware of Sree’s stalkerish past, the two hit it off as friends, with Sindhuja inviting him out for a party.
Sindhuja is an independent woman who comes from an affluent family. She harbours a dream of opening a restaurant in LA, and her father (Anand Babu) is a salsa teacher who is supportive of his daughter’s decisions.
Sree’s parents meanwhile, played by Rekha and Raja Rani Pandian, are scouting for a suitable bride for their 26-year-old son, with Rekha playing the ever-worried mother who’s life goal is to get her son married.
PPK actually gets one’s hopes high with its character sketches. While Sree plays a man who is very much wound up in his whimsical world of love equals lifelong commitment, Sindhuja is someone who does not believe in social constructs. In one scene, Sindhuja explains to a teary-eyed Sree that having sex does not necessarily mean that the two have to be in love – a concept that defies his understanding.
The two end up falling in love after a brief, public fall out. The scene that follows this public confrontation is particularly well done, with Sindhuja walking in with a smile, with her head held high. It was also heartening to see Sindhuja to explain that women have always had to sacrifice their dreams to settle down into the institution of marriage and family. A point that was driven home – well, almost.
PPK has shades of the Hollywood film, 500 Days of Summer, with Sindhuja refusing to explain why she wouldn’t love him back or agree to getting married. She’s called selfish for wanting to pursue her dreams, and is also called a woman who gets into “casual relationships”, all of which she wears like a tag.
There are “indha madri pasanga…” moments where Sree’s unfaltering love is presented as reason enough to love him back.
Therefore one might hope that the director would present a well-balanced understanding of social constructs, of love, sex, and marriage.
But PPK comes crashing down with its portrayal of the “modern woman”, who ends up rethinking all her decisions in life, of being the one who was in the wrong for so long. All that the film builds up, it washes clean in the last 20 minutes. There’s even the ‘Is your mother important to you or is it me?’ question that’s actually out of character for Sindhuja to be asking.
The climax in particular leaves you with a bad aftertaste, most of which is disappointment still fresh on your taste buds.
Raiza does a great job playing the bold Sindhuja and Harish plays his “innocently-cute” character equally well.
In PPK, the director explores what happens if two people with opposing schools of thought fall for each other. While the result should’ve been a middle ground for resolving differences, it swirls down the sinkhole of “stop with all your dream nonsense and fall in line with what the society expects of you” aka “get married if you fall in love.”
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film's producers or any other members of its cast and crew.