‘Mudhal Ni Mudivam Ni’ review: Kishan Das does well in this thrilling tale of high-school romance

There is a section of the Indian online community on Twitter and elsewhere that values ​​the 90s more than any other era. These people, who identify themselves as ’90s kids, seem to think life was slow and simple back then. They look at the objects, people, places, and pop culture of that era with a heavy craving.

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First hour of Darbuka Siva’s first directorial film, Mudhal ni Mudivam ni, this is for the crowd. It effectively captures the ’90s of middle class Madras, to be exact, of the ’90s through a bunch of high-school kids. You can find boys in full-sleeved loose shirts (buttoned up and neatly tied) and trousers, girls in churidars with sleeves between their arms, a buzzing Spencer’s Plaza, an annual diary transformed into a ‘slam book’ are’, ‘Flames’, trying to figure out the fate of their potential romance through phone booths, Yamaha RX100 motorcycles, cassettes, VHS tapes, Walkmans, and so on…

The scenes unfold as mini-episodes capturing the lives of the students. There is a funny episode where a sex-education seminar, presented by a pastor, ends with a slide that reads, “Please obey your elders for a prosperous life.” Another scene involves a boy who presses the letter ‘C’ on his arms with acid to propose to a girl named Katherine. When she refuses, he asks his friend if he can change the ‘C’ to ‘S’ so that he can propose to Sonia. On being warned by another friend that he will have to be a vegetarian for life if he marries Sonia, he decides to modify the ‘C’ to ‘G’ (for Gayatri)! The innocence of first love, Vinoth (between Kishan Das) and Rekha (Meetha Raghunath) are also captured well.

Despite the lack of a solid plot, the first half of the film is as pleasant as a rare cool breeze during a Chennai summer afternoon. The sepia-toned visuals, Siva’s light background score, and teen pranks and pranks make the film effortlessly delicious. But only till the first half, after which the film stops.

Due to a supernatural intervention, Vinoth sees a future, during which he meets his classmates at a reunion. Suddenly, the visuals lose the semblance of the warmth that it had so far. The characters appear to be fictional. We hear cliched lines, like “Ivlo varsham apdi pochune therla la? ellam nethu nadandha mari irukku…” (“I don’t know how many years have passed by so quickly. It seems like everything just happened yesterday.”)

On one hand, the film’s title and additional screen time actors Kishan and Meetha get, indicating that they are in the lead. But on the other hand, it also establishes that this is not just the love story of Vinoth and Rekha (the characters they play). For example, at the beginning of the film, Vinoth’s friend tells him, “You are not the hero and we are not your companions.”

But Kishan Das has done a good job of debut. He tries to pique our interest in what happens to Vinoth, and is as convincing as a fresh-faced schoolboy, whether expressing strange excitement upon receiving his first kiss, or a bearded gloom. As a musician who hasn’t moved on from his earlier separation from Love.

In the second half, instead of focusing on Vinoth and Rekha, Shiva decided to show us the stories of their classmates as well. Most of their lives are not what they used to be. However, it is difficult to empathize with these characters as we do not stay with anyone for long. The film suffers from this lack of focus, and even the very simple resolution of these conflicts doesn’t help.

Mudhal ni Mudivam ni currently Zee5. streaming on