Kalaba Kaadhalan

Call it the effect of watching Aadhi, Paramasivan, Saravanaa & Kalvanin Kaathali back to back, but Kalaba Kaadhalan did come as a whiff of fresh air.

The plot is not entirely new. People are going to call it an inspiration from 'Vaali' and its poor cousin ‘Sheesha’ (hindi), which reversed genders in the Vaali storyline and had Neha Dhupia in the lead. It also ultimately failed at the box office because of the fact that her breasts, however attractive, couldn’t do the acting.

There is a state of mind when we contemplate doing something that we know for sure is taboo. When we are done contemplating about all the consequences and have let the heart rule the mind, we come to a stage where we are done thinking and we start doing it. The protagonist of ‘Kalaba Kaadhalan’, Kanmani is in such a state of mind.

Kanmani’s elder sister Anbarasi has recently married Akilan, who is as perfect as a groom can be in Kanmani’s eyes. She has convinced herself that the best option for her is to marry Akilan. She comes to town to stay with the newly weds on the pretext of ‘attending a computer course’ and after doting on him for several days, bizarrely, approaches him with the idea. What is novel about the whole thing is that, Kanmani is not an evil woman. She has no interest in stealing him from her sister. In her mind, she cannot see what she is doing wrong by asking her sister or Akilan to consent to the arrangement. Akilan is taken aback. He tries to talk her out of it at first but she doesn’t budge one bit. Akilan’s surprise turns later to sympathy and then to outright anger, which is understandable from our point of view, but leaves Kanmani unfazed. These events provide for some interesting scenes and some cliched ones.

The movie then meanders towards an ending, which I have no intention of giving away. Suffice to say that there’s a good chance that you’ll guess wrong.

Arya (or is it ‘Aarya’) plays Akilan, the sophisticated alpha male from the big city with an air of simplicity around him. Arya is still stuck in the ‘chin down, eyeballs up’ mode that he was using effectively in ‘Arinthum Ariyaamalum’. It doesn’t quite work in this movie. He has a few moments but there is nothing earth shattering about his acting. At least, in my humble opinion, this is right kind of material for him. In his last outing in ‘Oru Kallooriyin kadhai’, he was abysmal.

Renuka Menon as Anbarasi has very little to do apart from appearing in a couple of songs. There is not much to talk about her, but surely, the dubbing artiste could have been a little easy on our ears. The squeaking voice is just as irritating as it was in ‘Aa .. Aah’ where, I think the same person had dubbed for Nila.

But the pick of the pack is surely Akshaya who plays Kanmani. We get her character established very early in the movie in a totally unnecessary scene. It’s a dead giveaway of the plot. Her expressive eyes help her a long way in registering a convincing performance and I hope we get to see more of her.

My best wishes go to the directory ‘Igor’ (what a name! and the I is pronounced as in idli) for choosing not to make another ‘Aadhi’, ‘Paramasivan’ or ‘Saravanaa’.