Karthik Subbaraj’s short is the ‘late-a vandhalum latest-a varuven’ of the bunch. GVM’s is nice, too.
Spoilers ahead…
It’s the season for anthologies, and Amazon Prime Video gives us one based on the theme of “New Beginnings”. The first short is by Sudha Kongara. It features Jayaram, Urvasi, Kalidas Jayaram and Kalyani Priyadarshan — and it has two terrific conceits. One of them I cannot reveal. I’ll just say it’s about how love literally makes us younger — feel younger, look younger. Indeed, the title is Ilamai Idho Idho. (There’s another Ilaiyaraaja song homage in the final short, Miracle, directed by Karthik Subbaraj. Here, the song is Oru kili uruguthu.) The other sweet touch is a small nod to Alaipaayuthey. A couple makes a plan to watch the movie. Then, as they are forced to spend increasing amounts of time together due to the lockdown, they begin to bicker like the characters played by Madhavan and Shalini.
Read the rest of this article at the link above.
Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Baradwaj Rangan 
karthik299
October 16, 2020
GVM’s short was very good with the emotional impact. It had the trademark Tanglish dialect but it was great to see the chemistry between grandfather and granddaughter unlike his usual love stories. However, I wish the song by Bombay Jayshree in the end was better. It didn’t hit the feels as I expected it to be. MS Bhaskar and Ritu Varma were way more arresting with their performances and the song seemed too average compared to that. Karthik Subbaraj triumphed way above others. Our very own Guy Ritchie. All the remaining shorts seemed really generic as you mentioned, or rather bland. Zero impact or connection and too artificial.
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Karthik
October 16, 2020
There’s a superb moment where a drug addict (who isn’t judged but treated with sympathy) explains the addiction: “Because my dreams were too big for me”. There’s real poetry in that line
I believe dialogue credits for the Rajiv Menon short is also due to one of our own “Friends of Blogical Conclusion” to borrow the phrase from Eswar’s article. I don’t know if he wrote that line, but regardless– Congratulations, K. R. Adhithya!
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madhusudhan194
October 16, 2020
GVM is turning out to be such a fascinating filmmaker, isn’t he? His films turn out to be repetitive and talky but he seems to be doing very good work on OTT with Reshma Ghatala as his writer. Can’t wait for Paava Kathaigal and more liberated works from him.
Many congratulations K. R. Adithya! Having read your articles and followed you on Twitter, it feels good to see you taking this big step forward.
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Eswar
October 16, 2020
Congratulations K. R. Adhithya.
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Sukanya
October 16, 2020
The GVM short was truly terrible. There was a germ of an idea, and the construct was to recreate the idea, I found it disappointingly contrived. What should have been moving – it made me detached, I watched the actors act and cringed. Am in disbelief that The GVM is the author of this inanity.
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Ex. Voldemort
October 16, 2020
Spoiler alert
The Sudha Kongara short started off really well. I loved the whole love makes you young conceit. The one thing I didn’t like at all was the song and the cringy dance. It removed all the rooted realness of the short and was annoyingly long. Had they reduced its time and focused on the other lovely touches like the small things they fight about, I would have loved it more. Their fight seemed so real, maybe its my not so great coliving experience that speaks here, but people fight over these housekeeping things all the time.
Congratulations, Adithya. It’s really wonderful to know that someone you have known in this blog was involved in the making. Onwards and Upwards!
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Ex. Voldemort
October 16, 2020
Surprised that not everyone liked the Bombay Jayashree song. I thought it was beautiful. However agree that it doesn’t match up to the wonderful MS Bhaskar. The man is just so good and endearing.
On a side note, surprising that she dressed up so well at home for her calls. All I have known are messy buns, unkempt hair and night clothes : P
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AdhithyaKR
October 16, 2020
Thank you. Yes, the line was mine. 🙂 Seeing that portion of the review made my day.
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AdhithyaKR
October 16, 2020
Thanks a lot!
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AdhithyaKR
October 16, 2020
@Eswar Thank you 🙂
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AdhithyaKR
October 16, 2020
@Ex. Voldemort Thanks! 🙂
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brangan
October 17, 2020
I was waiting for your confirmation, AdhithyaKR. This is so awesome. Congratulations.
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AdhithyaKR
October 17, 2020
@brangan Thank you sir! Looking back, the blog was the starting point, so a special thanks to you and the community here. ☺️
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Naren
October 17, 2020
First and foremost, the time-tested theory that comedians and comediennes make for very good drama actors has worked its magic here too. Jayaram, Oorvasi, M.S.Bhaskar and Kathadi Ramamoorthy come out on top of the whole lot.
Ilamai Idho Idho
BR, as I tweeted u before, I highly recommend watching Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”. The third act is not bad but is definitely not for everyone. But the rest of the movie is WOW. Anyway, getting to the point, u shud particularly pay attention to the entire sequence portrayed by Toni Collette and David Thewlis and I’m sure u can draw some similarities and parallels to the picturisation of Illamai Idho Idho. The concepts r very different but the visualisation . . .
It’s one thing to b cheerful and uplifting but when it wallows in clichéd childishness high on prozac, it becomes really cumbersome.
Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum
Ritu Varma more than makes up for the KKK drag. M.S.Bhaskar’s character is a composed and stabilised version of the character he played in Mozhi. But even he cudn’t save the characterisation as it progressed and ended up being contrived as Sukanya has mentioned here before. I don’t know how GVM managed to build that image but I simply don’t agree with the disappointments mentioned here by others. GVM bungled once again and he didn’t disappoint at that. I also don’t understand the “Tanglish” aspect being projected as a unique attribute to him. Even the low-life conmen in the “Miracle” segment have their vocabulary peppered with bilingual words.
Coffee, Anyone?
I simply don’t understand why Suhasini keeps pounding away again and again at writing screenplays. She clearly sucks, off the scales. Also, one wud think she’d have refined her acting palette over the years but there she was, giddy as a schoolgirl, just like her melodramatic 80s and 90s. I was LMAO at the irony when she reprimands Shruti Hasan’s character for being melodramatic. Anu Hasan’s character is at the twilight of her wit’s end and is desperately clinging on to the shangri-la in her head. The characterisation of all 3 sisters seem to b frantically battling a viscious prozac withdrawal.
Reunion
Unintended awkwardness all over the place right from the start. Andrea’s character’s addiction revelation had a dramatic underreaction from Leela Samson’s character. Andrea’s outburst of dancing and singing shud’ve been awkward but turned out to b super cringeworthy.
Miracle
The car tyre stash is as predictable as they come and it became obvious the moment they mentioned the tyre. The reversal of fortune twist was the only noteworthy aspect of the segment. The low-life conman intently listening to a self-help guru speaking a lot of English is so out of place. Also, they both using the word “bliss” seems very uncharacteristic.
Positives
Great house interiors in Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum, Coffee, Anyone? and Reunion.
Drawbacks and Irresponsible Misinformation
Romanticising the 21-day lockdown as the beginning and end of the pandemic.
14-Day quarantine myth.
Masks improperly worn / not at all worn.
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Vikram s
October 17, 2020
I liked the first short very much… Both (or should I say all 4) were very good… Loved the central conceit… The Suhasini one was deeply affecting due to a personal situation I went through in the recent past… Liked the acting in the gvm one… Rajeev Menon’s film felt contrived at times… Loved the last one…
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v.vijaysree
October 17, 2020
Loved the MS Bhaskar character. I am a nuclear physicist — don’t pick on that boy, he has already apologized… ( Tamil, that too from Tirunelveli, I just had to say something…) Loved that bit…
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Sukanya
October 18, 2020
It’s strange to watch the actors on screen do their thing when not crafted ably either by script or direction. For me, I enjoy watching the charming Andrea – here, the whole premise is outlandish. It is as if film makers are riddled with notions on how a westernised woman who is artistic must play out her persona on screen, the serene Leela Samson is not given to even a mild astonishment or is just not plagued with any kind of moral slant on cocaine use. In reality, a good old Indian mom would go ballistic on a seemingly deranged pretty thing dancing like a half hearted dervish inside her home. I wonder if it’s very middle class of me to speculate so. At the very least, she ought to have worried about the girl’s influence on her High achieving son.
The Suhasini, Anu Hasan short – it seemed they were caught in a time warp. Naren put it across honestly: giddy as school girl, twilight. Spot on. It’s sad, but there it is. There needs to be better writing, one needn’t fill up screen space with verborrhea, so much of telling, show dammit – we have grown up with you, we need you to be at the top of your game. But I suspect they hold on to how best they know to do what they do.
As Vikram here mentioned I too had a similar situation in family but sadly no happy ending. Instead of the grating giddy girls we could have had…thoughtfulness, maturity perhaps.
And yet again, I can’t believe the classy, cool, charming GVM did this short. Just, NO. Please, No.
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Faroo
October 18, 2020
Ilamai Idho Idho: Aaha ilamai! Terrific conceit about feeling and looking younger. The song was a little too much though. Nice performances by all 4 leads.
Coffee Anyone? Great example for the “N” word. Now only if Kamal had dropped in. Terrible overacting with Anu winning the honors – so over the top. Also very elitist — a spanish song and a hindi song and a choreographed dance. Worst bit of the lot. Kathadi R was the saving grace. BR – surprise you let it off so easy.
Reunion – Bad eyeliner and an even worse hairdo on Andrea are no match for writing up Leela characters as not batting an eyelid on a cocaine snorting girl on the floor. Atleast it showed Andrea having good rounded shoulders 😐
Avalum Naanum: Fantastic wardrobe for Ritu. Moderately engaging due to the leads. But then this is Poove Poochudava as a short. The Zoom bombing was cringy.
Miracle: Sigh of relief – at least it wasnt set in the hyper-realized model homes of the other stories. Everyone knows the money is in the stepney, but the director has a better twist up his sleeve!! Biriyani of the lot.
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brangan
October 18, 2020
Sukanya: so much of telling, show dammit
I feel this “show don’t tell” mantra has been misinterpreted in all sorts of ways. The idea comes from the notion that film is a visual medium, BUT IT ISN’T.
It’s an audio-visual medium.
You don’t want too much “telling” when the visual is already there (i.e. the “showing”) — but here, if the sisters didn’t “tell”, we would have no idea about their background and relationships.
The problem here was more that the “telling” was so generic. The dialogues never rose to become… art. There was no shaping of what needed to be “told”, no sharpness.
Faroo:About not coming down harder with these films, none of them made me angry. It was all pleasant and generic and unremarkable and it all went down easy. I did not find anything that was aggressively BAD!
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Vishnu Kishore
October 18, 2020
Did anyone else find the constant shake of the camera in GVM’s short annoying? What is the reason for that? Was it shot with a hand-held iPhone?
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Odiyan Hater
October 18, 2020
Back in the 1920s a heartbroken Varadarajan asked Subbalakshmi: “Afterall what does he have that I don’t?”
And she replied, “Putham Puthu Kaalai”
Chicks always dig men with cool transportation
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sorenkierky
October 18, 2020
Just a dire and dull show except for parts of a few films. Ilamai Idho had the good conceit (with enjoyable performance and pair w/ Urvashi and Jayaram, that really saved the short), and Miracle was okayish, a relief from the rest.
But otherwise, I don’t get how this is even remotely interesting? I mean the blandness of it all is the most annoying part, there’s nothing interesting or creative (despite being OTT and how they all have the least of the usual shackles). Even GVM’s one is totally cringey, although the leads made it somewhat bearable.
I really hope their Netflix (with Vetri/Sudha/GVM/VS) one isn’t as dire as this. Lordie.
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Jallikattu lover
October 18, 2020
Did anyone notice a parallel to Kamal and his brothers in Suhasinis film? It felt like a deeply personal real life story about the Haasan brothers with the leads transposed to being sisters instead of brothers. If this is true, then full marks to Suhasini for the clever conceit.
Funnily, Kamal Haasan in real life is the latecomer baby and his screen counterpart is played by Shruti, his own daughter.
.
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v.vijaysree
October 18, 2020
And in that snazzy music studio Shruti Hasan character has a pad of stick-on pottu handy, just in case she has to call some traditional elder??? How cheesy can this get?
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Guru
October 19, 2020
Why does GVM have to make M.S.Bhaskar say ‘Right-o’ ?
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H. Prasanna
October 19, 2020
Congratulations Adhithya KR.
For all of the Hassan family short, I was half-expecting the mother to be revealed as Kamal Hassan.
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hari
October 19, 2020
What a delightful set of short movies. Brought smile after every episode. The veterans Jayaram, Urvashi, Kathadi and MS Baskar bring so much energy into the frames. A definite watch.
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Naren
October 19, 2020
To create moments in situations which can b utilised to throw in a little backstory every now and then is good writing. But what happened here is effusive exposition like in a stage drama. That’s “Verborrhea”, which is an abuse of the audio-visual medium.
One has to cover the ground rules first to make refinements such as bringing poignance or other embellishments to the dialogues to make them artistic. The basics have been forsaken here. Moreover, it’s not just Suhasini but most of them from that generation have the same problems . . . Melodramatic, talkative and zero adaptability to the current times. Remember “Ponmagal Vandhaal”?!
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Mani
October 19, 2020
@BR : for the Miracle short, it was Bobby Simha and Sharath Ravi planning the heist. Muthu Kumar is the other character who they run into.
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v.vijaysree
October 19, 2020
Faroo — Kathadi R was the saving grace. Agree. He looked like he couldn’t wait for those daughters of his to leave. I felt much the same way 🙂
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Sriram
October 20, 2020
No mention of Shruti Hasan’s Tamil pronunciation. In the couple of dialogues she has there were atleast 3 mispronunciations. I feel for her dad.
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Cathy Cooper
October 20, 2020
Not sure if something was lost in translation aka subtitles, I couldn’t quite understand the message being conveyed through the song sang by Bombay Jayshree. Please someone help 🙂 And the “right-o” sounded rather affected.
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shaviswa
October 20, 2020
@Jallikattu
That was brilliant. Yes – you are correct. Suhasini is Charuhasan’s daughter, Anu is Chandrahasan’s – so three brothers translated to sisters acted by the respective daughters. And Shruti is in the entertainment industry while the elder sisters studied well and well settled.
Excellent.
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Guru
October 21, 2020
@Jallikattu lover, And KH is the most shining star among the brothers.
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abishekspeare
October 21, 2020
Watching Coffee Anyone makes me scared for Ponnyin Selvan. I couldn’t buy one second of it.
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praneshp
October 22, 2020
@abishekspeare: There’s no Suhasini involvement in Ponnyin Selvan I think. Jeyamohan dialogues, Elango Kumaravel screenplay.
Of course, Mani Ratnam isn’t all that trustable either, but any crappiness will be his crap, no Suhasini crap 🙂
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Jallikattu lover
October 22, 2020
Saw the Puthum Pudhu Kalaai conference interview. Wow.. Suhasini is so knowledgable about the craft esp. cinematography .. She is not pure female intuition which is what you would expect from a ‘woman director’ like say Lakshmi Ramakrishnan. Suhasini is more than just Mani’s partner and his occasional writer.
Dismissing her outright as someone sub-par is nothing but pure misogyny.
The house in Reunion was a great find. It must have been hard to get hold of esp. during this pandemic. It has echoes of the house in Kandukondain and the whole ‘house as a character’ trope.
That said, Coffee Anyone and Reunion were made by filmmakers who are way past their 20-year tenure and it shows. And, Gautham is getting there.
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Alia
October 29, 2020
@BR,
I definitely agree that the writing/dialogue was generic, but what could the writers to do make the dialogue/situations less generic? I’m unable to pinpoint specific things they could have changed to add specificity to these stories. As someone who’s just getting into screenwriting, it would be great to hear your (and others!) thoughts on this.
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