Modern Love Chennai's Greatest Romance Is With Music

Courting Chennai

Modern Love Chennai comes like a breath of fresh air in the glut of Indian OTT anthologies from the past few years, writes Aditya Shrikrishna.

AMAZON PRIME’s Modern Love Chennai, the new anthology based on the eponymous New York Times column, comes like a breath of fresh air not just among the other localised offshoots of the franchise but also in the glut of Indian OTT anthologies of the past few years. Under creative producer Thiagarajan Kumararaja, we get six stories — from six directors and five writers — that explore not just love but also heartbreak, memory and self-realisation that’s more universal and anthropological than modern, which rarely fails if the execution hits.

The stories and treatments are vastly different but there is a throughline. They are all anchored by women, largely focusing on their perspective, and an inventive musical terrain runs like blood in their veins. Not that anyone breaks into song — except in maybe one instance — but music is a handy tool that conveys story or emotion in all of them. No wonder that the anthology is replete with scores and songs from Ilaiyaraaja, Yuvan Shankar Raja, GV Prakash and Sean Roldan; the maestro does the heavy lifting in three films and imparts some lessons along the way. The opening credits are tuned to Yuvan’s theme ‘Yaayum Gnaayum’ over Trotsky Marudu’s sights of Chennai.

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If Music Be The Food Of Love...

By Aditya Shrikrishna

In the Akshay Sundher directed Margazhi (adapted and written by Balaji Tharaneetharan), a young girl picking up the pieces of a broken family gathers them only to find first love. Jazmine’s (played by a remarkably restrained Sanjula Sarathi) parents have separated, and her mother has left her to her father. The film is all pastel blue and yellow, the lighting too is uninvited indoors. Jazmine’s loneliness translates through the atmosphere Sundher conjures and breaks through the walls. The outdoors is under clouds and Jazmine and her father Jayaseelan’s home is a dilapidated ruin where he teaches students to play the keyboard and she is a choir girl at the church.

Akshay gives her a leitmotif; she sits alone when the choir breaks for lunch and is glued to her earphones. Usually, filmmakers go for a familiar retro song for these purposes but why fear when the maestro is here? She is listening to the album’s ‘Thendral’ and is always interrupted during her contemplative moment when the song’s keys and strings just begin to unite. A tale of adolescent love, her life is interrupted by Milton (Chu Khoy Sheng) in a similar way. As young as the music is, the dialogues are even more effervescent and simpler. A scene (cinematography by Vikas Vasudevan) with the choir girls pushing their cycle is staged in the most languid fashion. They talk about their first encounter of a naked male and member, and when Jazmine mentions her dream of an undressed Milton, Raaja’s own lines of ‘pudhumai pudhumai vilayattu’ kick in.

The joys of this film are in the seamless transitions in mood — from a melancholic beginning to the throes of being in love and zeroing in on the unspoken parts of it. Like a game of basketball between Milton and Jazmine’s teams where she easily overpowers him or when she becomes conscious of her braces and Sarathi’s minute detailing in her performance when she rarely smiles wide enough for them to be visible in public. Or the effort she puts into her dressing and looks when they begin a tiny courtship. The church setting plays an important part in this tale, from the pastor telling Jayaseelan that once the court order comes, he must update the divorce registry, to Jazmine’s formation of a union within its confines just as one separates. And it is December, the month of Margazhi and Christmas. The film comes full circle, from a divorce to the waltz of guitars signifying youthful zest in ‘Nenjil Oru Minnal’ to ‘Endrum Endhan’ — a happy melody that’s also too short, but memorable beyond life. Like first love.

If Margazhi revolves around a pair of younglings, Balaji Sakthivel’s Imaigal (again written by Balaji Tharaneetharan) skips the years from college romance to midlife torment in the span of 42 minutes. Starring TJ Bhanu as Devi and Ashok Selvan as Nithiya, the film sets its eyes on the labour of the woman in the family as her world diminishes from her purview as the years pass. This is literalised by Devi’s retinal degenerative disease, her vision beginning to blur in the periphery during college to going completely blind in about a decade. When Nithiya is asked to take a day to decide weighing their shared future, he responds in a seemingly informed affirmative. He doesn’t say a word, he returns with ‘Devi’ tattooed on his chest.

The film is minimalist in its approach. For such a plot point, Imaigal is a riot of few words and a lot of colours (shot by Jeeva Sankar). When Devi and Nithiya enjoy their dating years followed by marital enthusiasm, Sakthivel imparts various hues in hill stations, lakes, boats and Ferris wheels. Yuvan’s ‘Peranbae’ plays through these images, and we almost quickly jump to Devi in a hospital bed unable to spot her new-born daughter’s face clearly from the side. She quits her job to stay at home and take care of the family just as Nithiya’s vision goes blind even with a pair of healthy eyes. An argument in the middle of the road is Imaigal’s best moment, the husband coming to terms with his wife’s physical and emotional labour when she explains what she stands to lose by losing vision, Yuvan’s keys spreading a lilt over Devi’s life, a rhythm that suddenly stops as she begins to make her point. The film ends on a musical note; Yuvan’s score drowns out what could have been diegetic, a tiny anomaly in an otherwise interesting work.

While retro might signify Ilaiyaraaja (the Modern Love Chennai soundtrack disproves that notion), for a certain generation Deva’s ‘Meenamma’ from Aasai could be the same. It’s what a local self-styled parody of a godman is listening to when Vaijayanthi (Vasundhara Kashyap) takes Shoba (Sri Gouri Priya) to him. Shoba recently had an abortion and Vaijayanthi wonders what the future holds for her but Shoba storms out of the place announcing that she’ll live life on her terms. Rajumurugan’s Lalagunda Bommaigal is about the women in North Chennai who work in a bakery. As is par for the course for Rajumurugan, words like socialism appear out of nowhere and there is talk of Urdu, Telugu and Tamil co-existing in the area but rarely intermingling.

This is Mint Street — colourfully shot by Nirav Shah — with its clock tower, so the food stall also employs migrant labourers from northern India, one of whom is Nathuram (Vasudevan Murali). This is new territory for Rajumurugan, the subject raw and weighty but the treatment surprisingly light-hearted. A whole musical number with Sean Roldan’s ‘Jingura Dhanga’ is filmed to Shoba’s rollercoaster relationship with men around her. The setting is pulpier and focuses on discord within plurality and the idea of slicing out the bad parts from an apple because one can stay secure but not hungry. The film works in parts mostly thanks to Sri Gouri Priya and Vasundhara’s performances, but the idea is not as fleshed out as one would like. Unconvincing actors playing Hindi speaking roles doesn’t work in the film’s favour.

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