Pallavi Anu Pallavi

A young man is involved with an older woman whose marriage has ended. The relationship is real for both of them and impossible to sustain; his family, his surroundings and the age gap keep intervening. In the end they separate and he marries someone his own age. The subject is not forbidden love but how a first relationship changes a person. The woman is not presented as an obstacle or a sin; the narrative makes room for her decisions too, which was not the norm in the Indian cinema of the period. The form is built from calm, long scenes and keeps its distance from the popular templates of those years. Ilaiyaraaja's music is one of the things carrying the film. This is Mani Ratnam's first film as a director, made in Kannada. He would later be known for large-scale work in Tamil cinema, and the quiet, observational tone here reads as the first form of those films. It left no mark at the box office but drew attention for its writing and opened a second door for Ratnam. Anil Kapoor plays the young man and Lakshmi the woman. Who it is for: anyone curious about the beginning of Mani Ratnam and viewers who like quiet Indian drama of the eighties. Who it is not for: those wanting pace; the film is slow and its plot is deliberately kept small.