With Love

Sathya does not want to marry, but his sister insists and arranges a meeting. Monisha is the woman across the table. They start talking and soon notice something: they were at the same school years ago. They begin talking about those days; who was in love with whom, what a certain teacher did, where people went. The arranged meeting turns into a conversation about memory and the two grow closer. Madhan directs. Abishan Jeevinth and Anaswara Rajan take the leads. The narrative runs in two times: the meeting now and the school years. The passages in the past are born from the talk and the film shows them directly. Its idea is that memory is not shared; the two remember the same years differently, and the details do not match when they describe the same event. It is a small scale Tamil film with no large cast; the narrative rests entirely on two people talking. The school sections carry a nostalgic register and the period detail is what is most liked about it. Its limit is predictability; where the meeting is going is clear from the start and the film takes no risk. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil romance and narratives carrying school nostalgia. Who it is not for: little happens, the structure repeats, and the ending returns to formula.