Mudhal Nee Mudivum Nee

Mudhal Nee Mudivum Nee (2022) is set in a Catholic school in Chennai in the late nineties and almost nothing happens in it. A group of boys start their eleventh year. They play football, learn guitar, trade video cassettes, fall in love and fail to say so. That is the film, and it does not go much beyond it. The reason it works is detail. The Chennai of the nineties is not a costume or an object of nostalgia, it is simply the place life happens. Cassettes, notebooks, bus stops. Director Darbuka Siva is a music composer and this is his first film. He wrote the score as well, and it shows: scene lengths are built to song structure and several passages run without dialogue. Most of the cast are unknown newcomers, which serves the film. Nobody looks like a star. It premiered on ZEE5 without a wide theatrical release and still built its own audience among Tamil viewers. It runs 148 minutes, which is long. Good for: coming of age drama, Tamil cinema, and nostalgia. Less good for: there is almost no plot, the running time is long, and anyone waiting for it to arrive somewhere will keep waiting.