Director: Ranjit Jeyakodi
Cast: Harish Kalyan, Shilpa Manjunath
‘Ispade Rajavum’ is a story about the rather stormy relationship between an excessively short-tempered lad Gautham (Harish Kalyan) and Thara (Shilpa Manjunath). It starts off on a ‘boy and girl hate each other, but boy and girl fall in love’ template, something that’s not new to Tamil cinema. We’ve seen this employed to terrific effect in films like Mayakkam Enna. Here however, the writing isn’t half as good in these initial sequences and we end up with scenes that are highly inorganic and lacking in feel.
It was never going to be easy for Gautham and Thara. While Thara hails from an affluent family, with aspirations of becoming a designer, Gautham is seemingly unemployed without any great ambition or goal. Him and his friends can often be found playing carrom or loitering around the area on their bikes and his short fuse ensures he often finds himself in hot water with the law. What complicates matters is that Thara is about to be engaged to an old family friend, and this is where the film finally takes off. Gautham confronts Thara about the situation and she plays it down coolly, something that really irks Gautham. He wants answers, Thara isn’t in a position to give one. She asks for patience. His fuse blows. The tension is palpable and isn’t helped by his intentions to take on or take down her fiancé.
Harish Kalyan does pull off this character of a rough, angry young man well to large extent. This is also helped by vast improvement in the writing itself in the second half of the film. There is a scene where he smashes a stranger’s bike harmlessly parked on the side of a road just because he spots the name ‘Thara’ scribbled on it. And he loves bikes! There is a back story for the source of Gautham’s anger that involves his mother and a troubled childhood. And there is also a pertinent Father-Son scene towards the end of the film where his father explains his own role in the whole debacle and reasons out to Gautham why he should not be judging his mother so easily. But just when you think the screenplay is back on track, there is a drug induced, Anjala inspired love failure song to slow the whole pace down (there had to be one, didn’t it?). This song apart though, the final thirty minutes or so are quite engaging and do keep you guessing.
What the film ultimately suffers from is inconsistent writing. There is definitely something here that could have been molded into an exciting end product. What could have added more substance to the film is some more depth in Gautham’s character, for starters. What are his ambitions and goals? We never get to know this. The passion that the love between Gautham and Thara exudes is quite authentic and endearing and this is a small win. However, this house of cards does seem incomplete. Just Spades and Hearts were probably not enough to make it stand strong.
Overall rating: 2/5
