Dada

A Tamil film about a young father. Manikandan is in his final year at college. He and Sindhu have been together for a while and neither of them is thinking further than the next week. She becomes pregnant. Both families refuse it, an abortion is arranged and then not gone through with, and the two of them are effectively put out. They marry and have a son. He drops out and takes whatever work he can get. From there the film is not a romance. The marriage does not hold; she leaves for reasons the film gives her honestly, and he is left with a baby. The middle section is the reason the film worked. A young man with no money, no help and no idea how to look after a child, learning it badly and slowly over years. What the narrative is interested in is not parenting but consequence: the film keeps returning to a decision two twenty year olds made without thinking and never lets either of them off it. The son is written as a person rather than a device, and the scenes between the two of them carry the second half. The tone moves between comedy and drama, and some of the comic scenes sit awkwardly against what is happening around them. Kavin plays Manikandan and Aparna Das plays Sindhu. Ganesh K. Babu directed; it was his first feature. The film opened without stars or a large campaign and became a commercial success on word of mouth. Who it is for: anyone who wants a young Indian film about responsibility rather than romance. Who it is not for: anyone who wants the marriage repaired; the film's view of the woman's choices is thinner than its view of the man's.