Vinnai Thandi Varuvaya is a dark personal movie which speaks the language of love and loss. A movie sincere to its characters and their idiosynchrasies, sincere to its little joys and scathing scars that this crazy thing called love could do to the human heart.
The movie revolves around two characters, Karthik and Jessie. Karthik knows what he wants, while Jessie wants everything and knows she can’t have them. Karthik dreams and idealises life, he has the big picture in mind. While Jessie has no point of view, for she was never given the luxury to have a view, she merely becomes her fears. While Karthik thought only of himself and how people fit in his scheme of dreams, Jessie only thought of her circumstances and what set of people could ease the situation.
Karthik is not happy with an engineering job. He wants to make movies.He knows how to smooth talk to get into peoples good books with ease. He befriends the cameraman for he would be a useful contact. He claims he doesn’t want just another girl, but a love that will last when he is 80 and she is 81. It comes with pride, this promise. But all the pride vanishes when he is with her, He places her in his pedestial; he touches her feet and kisses them while they are in the train (an awkward yet a delicate scene) for she is his weakness. No, he is not a wussy. But in presence of this older woman, he has no control of himself. He breaks the mobile phone, he kicks the wall, he hurls abuses but he wouldn't slap her. He was a faithful dog that never bit.
For all her tranquility and grace, Jessie is just layers of confusion beneath the comfortable skin. She falls for him the first time their eyes meet, but she provokes him calling him a younger brother. She looks beautiful, and she yearns for flattery. She asks him, “Why do you fall for me, what did you like in me”, hoping for sweet flatteries. She wouldn’t stop him when he kisses her and later regret why she did not stop him. In a crucial moment, she promises togetherness and promises to talk to her father, we see a glimpse a truly joyous Jessie who finally knows what she wanted.., but then soon the confusion that is her takes over and she changes her mind. Her father says “you can marry karthik over my dead body”. But her fathers opinion is only incidental. Sh had readied herself to listen to him. She loves pain, she claims as they break up. For she believes pain is the way of life. She befells the same fate as her sister
She lets him go. She marries another man. Karthik is not able to move beyond her. His script has gone all awry.
Karthik, who lives in the mind, cannot let his script go wrong. He makes a movie of his tragic love story, with a happier end. His mind thinking of possibilities, still wondering what went wrong. He lives in denial while she lived by denying. He rectified this flaw in his movie by transforming Jessie’s personality as someone who finally makes up her mind and agrees for marriage. And he screens it to her too. Afterall, she is the inspiration for his movie. She is his opinion of love, and everything nice.
And she moves on, claiming independence from the wound by amputating the arm. She asks him to move on too.
Salut, Gawtham Vasudev Menon! You could have mad this worse, but not better.
