Alaipayuthey

A Tamil film about the first year of a marriage. Karthik and Shakthi meet at a wedding. He is an engineer, she is a medical student. The families are not suitable. There is a difference of class, Shakthi's father will not accept it, and Karthik's family does not warm to it either. They marry in secret. They hold a short ceremony at a temple, tell no one, and go on living in separate houses for a while. Then it comes out and both are put out of their homes. From there the film comes down into daily life. Rent, work, tiredness, evening quarrels and silences that grow longer. Karthik is trying to start his own company. Shakthi keeps shifts at the hospital and their hours never meet. What the narrative is interested in is not love but what follows it: the film passes quickly over the romance and gives its real running time to the wearing down of a marriage. The construction is broken. The narrative opens with an accident and moves by going back; the hospital corridor and the scenes of happiness keep cutting into each other. The music is one of the things carrying it. A. R. Rahman's score became one of the most listened to albums of the period in Tamil cinema. The director shot the same story again in Hindi two years later. R. Madhavan, Shalini and Swarnamalya are in the cast. Mani Ratnam wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone curious about realistic films on relationships and about Tamil cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the usual romantic structure; the narrative keeps breaking its timeline and the last section slides into melodrama.