The Shallow Charms of ‘With Love’

Madhan's With Love is a bad film. A very, very, very, very, very bad film. Its badness, however, also explains why this movie was a hit. As a romance about two people who went to the same school and met again years later as adults, With Love can barely breathe, let alone stand, in front of C. Prem Kumar's 96. As a rom-com involving a deal that's meant to reveal the couple's deeper thoughts and/or dark secrets to one another as well as the audience, Pradeep Ranganathan's Love Today, though another bad film, is comparatively better than Madhan's facile romance.

What irks me about movies like With Love is that they reach for low-hanging fruit like nostalgia and first crush/school romance and are loved for having a "heart." A few years ago, Vineeth Sreenivasan's sugary goo, Hridayam, was also praised on similar terms. Instead of well-developed, well-defined characters, these youthful romances recycle dead clichés in an urban package. Sathya (Abishan Jeevinth) might be a designer, and Monisha (Anaswara Rajan) might be a social media influencer, but their professions are little more than Christmas tree decorations. They sound cool and nice, but the movie remains incurious about these aspects of their lives.

What company does Sathya work for? How much does he earn? Sathya spends more time thinking about the food menu than working on an office project. What is his typical workday like? What about Monisha? How long does she take to come up with new content? How does she get paid? How much does she earn? What does she think of her competitors? What is her typical workday like? The characters neither talk about money nor try to learn about one another's routines and interests (except for past love interests). I imagine Sathya might have to be somewhat creative to be a good designer, and Monisha, too, needs to be creative to sustain and grow her online followers. Madhan, though, doesn't allow them to talk and discover common ground in their professions. What he does do is shove them into a ropey, predictable plot that reeks of cheap sentiments.

With Love might prove to be a good time for those who want to switch off their brains to luxuriate in the past—to think about school romances, FLAMES, slam books, ragging, and strict teachers. The movie's core message preaches that one must never arrive at a conclusion without grasping the full picture. It's a good sentiment that gets dragged into Madhan's flashy calculations and loses its power. He crosses every t and dots every i; he shows the impact of certain events, like a physical fight between boys about a girl, from two different angles. Yet all that "cleverness" merely yields a rom-com in which a stinky trope like Sathya misunderstanding a hug is used to tediously stretch the climax.

I can get behind the idea of following an unlikable boy like Sathya, who quickly becomes insecure when the girls he likes—Monisha in the present and Anisha (a remarkable Kavya Anil) in the past—hug, talk to, or shake the hand of other men. But Madhan never actually makes Sathya completely unlikable. He holds himself back; he cushions the ugliness with scenes meant to evoke chuckles, usually arriving after something serious.

Madhan, in other words, is that partner in a relationship who never fully commits. This is most evident in his confusion regarding what he wants to make out of With Love. Does he want to delve into grave issues like smoking, lung cancer, debts, and fatherly problems—or leave the audience smiling at unimaginative, nasty, yet "just sit back and have a good time" fluff? Madhan, unfortunately, does something worse: he mixes heavy stuff with disposable junk. This is why an incident involving a school teacher is resolved in a simple, hokey manner, and the answer behind a father's determined quest to run a restaurant comes across as both unsurprising and obvious.

Then again, something like With Love works precisely because it doesn't "burden" the audience with using their brain cells. They can just "feel it" and shut the detractors by regurgitating rubbish like "not every movie needs to be GREAT." Of course, I would argue that we don't have enough great films, but logic has no place in the realm of sentiments, which is why directors like Madhan appeal to the people's emotions. With a shallow story and stick figures, Madhan hasn't made his rom-com with love; he has created it to deliver superficial satisfaction. It's contrived; it's tender-hearted hokum.

Written by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times