Modern Love-fever is going nowhere any time soon, it seems. The English language short film anthology created by John Carney, after a two-season run, spawned Modern Love: Mumbai and Modern Love: Hyderabad, traveling from love stories set across Europe and the US to South Asia—all produced by Amazon Prime. The latest iteration titled Modern Love: Chennai, boasts a directorial list that includes Bharathiraja and Thiagarajan Kumaraja. Many will know Thiagarajan for his film Super Deluxe which represents a marked shift in the kind of stories told in Kollywood, though not without flaws. The popular director also took on the role of creator for Modern Love: Chennai, an ambitious project. So how does this much anticipated six-part anthology fare?
As an Ashok Selvan fan, I have no qualms admitting that Imaigal was the first of the films in Modern Love: Chennai I watched. The actor has, over his career, shown an often impeccable ability to pull off roles that range from quirky to demure to romantic hero. Precisely why Imaigal, directed by Balaji Sakthivel, felt keenly disappointing.
Ashok Selvan and TJ Bhanu play Nithya and Devi–a young couple starting off their married life together. Devi has a degenerative disorder that is slowly claiming her eyesight. She wants to get married, become a mother, and travel as much as possible before she becomes completely ceases to see. The director tries to capture the eager promises of first love, pitting it against the crushing demands of everyday life as time and marriage wear on. We see the story frequently from the vantage of Devi’s fading eyesight. There are moments that move you deeply, such as when she strains to see her newborn baby girl. But ultimately, Bhanu’s lacklustre acting and a script that loses steam as it approaches its end, make Imaigal an unsatisfactory watch. The film seems lost between a slow-burning slice-of-life narrative and trying to tell a well-paced story within the constraints of its runtime.
Lalagunda Bommaigal immediately made me rue the fact that I didn’t start watching the films in the order of appearance. Director Rajamurgan spins an irreverent world of nasty doctors, unhinged godmen, jokes placed with surgical precision, and a heroine who pulls no punches. Set in North Chennai, Shoba (Sri Gouri Priya) is recovering from a heartbreak. She’s angry, yet determined to find love. Those close to her want to help her heal but bring up thoroughly awkward ways to do it. Shoba’s confidant is Vaijaiyanthi, an older woman who cares little for what busy-body men have to say, giving us a cast of women characters we’re left rooting for. Where the film falters is in conveying the underlying point about love that it tries to make, blurring the distinction between irreverence and political indifference.
The best-made of all the films comes fourth in the line-up: Margazhi. Jazmine (Sanjula Sarathi), a lonely teenager who is melancholic about her parents’ divorce, has little else going on in her life except for church, catechism classes, and choir practice until Milton, a diffident boy of Chinese heritage walks in. Our young heroine who escapes in every possible moment through Illaiyarajaa’s music is quietly smitten.
Milton suddenly takes up Jazmine’s teenage fantasies that always play out in her mind to Rajaa’s songs. These fantasies are presented as matter of fact with no judgement. They just are. This is also the segment that has not one, but two of the songs sung by Raaja himself for Modern Love: Chennai–‘Thendral’ and ‘Nenjil Oru Minnal’. Margazhi, in fact, feels like a tender memorial to all young love that has wallowed in the sweetness of Raaja’s music. Directed by Akshay Sundhar and adapted and written by Balaji Tharaneetharan, this is the singular pitch-perfect film in Modern Love: Chennai. Its mixed-race casting–particularly where the girl is darker-skinned (almost unseen in Tamil cinema), makes Margazhi all the more a perfect watch.
Paravai Kootil Vazhum Maangal directed by Bharathiraja would have no doubt been looked forward to by fans of the veteran director. Ravi (Kishore), a married man, and Rohini (Vijayalakshmi Ahathian), who is divorced, are daily commuters on the same metro train line. They fall for each other and now Ravi wants to leave his wife and two young children to marry Rohini. The film tries, really tries, to take a liberated view of divorce, broken marriages, and new love, without denying the heartache they may bring along.
Ravi’s wife, Revathi (Ramya Nambeeshan), interestingly gets the lion’s share of the dialogues. Bharathiraja, through her, presents divorce in ways Kollywood has rarely managed to so far, yet something doesn’t quite fall in place in the most crucial sequence. Perhaps it's the claustrophobic staging of emotionally intense scenes or maybe it’s the preachy line delivery of the cast, particularly Ramya’s, that leaves one feeling as if this short film is more of a cinematically shot infomercial on understanding divorce and less of an organically unravelling story about three adults navigating a complex situation.
Thiagarajan’s own film has an exclusive run-time of one hour, while the rest of the films take approximately 45 minutes. Within the first ten minutes of his Ninaivo Oru Paravai, you’re repeatedly asking yourself if this film is on mind-altering drugs and that thought holds for the remaining run-time. It’s as if the director tried to outdo the imaginative quirkiness of Super Deluxe, but what precisely he was aiming for is hard to tell. Cinematically, nearly every frame is as carnivalesque as Super Deluxe—a film that Ninaivo Oru Paravai makes liberal references to.
And sure, it gives us a female lead–Sam (Wamiqa Gabi)-- who lives alone, smokes, drinks, has casual sex, and is every bit the woman Kollywood loves to vilify. Whether it accomplishes anything more than that in other areas of interest, such as an engaging storyline, even for a film that feels like a fever dream, can be a matter of contention.
Modern Love: Chennai can and must be applauded for breaking away from Kollywood tropes and putting forth views on love, falling out of love, divorce, and desire in ways Tamil audiences rarely get to see. The series leaves one hoping that regressive ideas in the cinema industry can make at least incremental changes.
But that intent too is still an incomplete picture. How does one make movies about romance, posit that their endeavour tells “locally rooted stories” placed in Tamil Nadu, and yet, mysteriously remove caste from the equation? Is this supposed to be an imaginary other Chennai where a systemic social evil, rooted so thoroughly in South Asia, does not exist? Or is it that the show makers want to present an India erased of caste to the world? Marriages are South Asia’s bedrock for maintaining caste endogamy, but bizarrely, no one in Modern Love: Chennai has to contend with this.
In terms of how the whole anthology turns out, it feels uneven at best. There are moments when some of the films truly shine, then there are those like Lalagunda Bomaigal that stand out, even with their flaws. Others like Kaadhal Enbadhu Kannula Heart Irukkura Emoji hardly make an impression and feel like filler episodes. Rithu Verma plays a hopeless romantic who discovers that love isn’t like it is in Tamil movies. Oh, and she has a run-in with Bharadwaj Rangan, the film critic. Rangan shoots off an impromptu lesson on poetic license in cinema, how real life is different, and proves it with a Jean-Luc Goddard quote. Unironic dating advice from dead Frenchmen is a pretty accurate reach for cringe-worthy, I suppose.
The original anthology, based on real-life stories sent to The New York Times column called Modern Love, did face reasonable critique for unevenness, but several of the stories in the show’s two season-run had a certain easy charm that kept you watching despite rolling your eyes at the frequent schmaltzy elements. Season 2 came out in the COVID-19 years and made a passing attempt to make sense of the meet-cute genre within the pandemic age. Modern Love also attempted diverse stories that included queer couples.
While Modern Love: Chennai is a series that will be memorable for having tried, unlike Putham Puthia Kaalai. The settings of Modern Love: Chennai are far more diverse than elite upper-class homes. But is it enough? The love stories are all cis-heterosexual in nature, with very few instances that genuinely move the viewer. The series seems to have tried too many things and not enough, all at once.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.