Kutty Story - the moon and the sun

 

Kutty Story

Tamil, 2021

 

Anthology

 

Edhirpaara Mutham

Director - Gautham Menon

Stars - Gautham Menon, Amala Paul

 

Avanum Naanum

Director - Vijay

Stars - Megha Akash, Amitash Pradhan

 

Logam

Director - Venkat Prabhu

Stars - Varun, Sangeetha

 

Aadal Paadal

Director - Nalan Kumaraswamy

Stars - Vijay Sethupathi, Aditi Balan

 

Mohan's Measure  ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

 

The poignancy in Kutty Story is in describing how love works despite all the odds being against it.  The anthology examines love's complexity, its uncertainty, even its seeming failure in offering a sense of hope and healing.

 

Among the four, Edhirpaara Mutham and Aadal Paadal impressed me the most. As you can probably tell from the names, the actors are not new to cinema, nor are they unfamiliar to the idea of expressing complex emotions in a subtle way.  And, it is through these two stories where adults feel connected, to love's lost and love gained, in a way that is best for us.  There is a bittersweet overtone in this, a sense of acceptance enshrined in love.

The remaining two films, however, are perhaps meant to convey messages to a generation I can no longer relate to.  But, it is more than just youthfulness that weakens them.  Both come across as flights of fancy, whimsical, with a certain hope that something miraculous can happen to make everything okay.  Indeed, one story is so whimsical, it is played out as an online game. This latter story especially stands out as weak because it is a fantasy, love existing in a virtual world, devoid of imperfections. But, imperfection is, as the other three stories suggest, is the ethos in which love is best brought to fruition.