Romanc(e)’in the movies

I’ve been thinking of posting this one for a long while now ever since “Modern Love” Chennai chapter was released on Prime. Modern Love series are basically anthology series inspired by Modern Love – American version. The series has its international version based on some famous cities and for India, till now, it covers Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai, with Bangalore being the surprising omission (so far)!!! While majority of the episodes from this series is dull, drab and for niche audience, with major focus on themes involving extra marital affairs, lgbqt. The series almost confirms that regular romance is non existent if not for the themes shown on these episodes. The one episode that I wanted to post about was probably the most cinematic of the entire series across all the cities. For its heart is in cinema and the protagonist is a movie buff that too of the romantic genre. It is inarguably the worst named one across the entire spectrum of Modern love series with its running title being – Kaadhal enbadhu kannula Heart irukkara Emoji (Love is heart eyed emoji)!! 

The episode is about a young girl, played by Ritu Varma, who is so smitten by love stories and romantic relationships depicted in movies that, she expects her life to be on similar lines. She goes through her list of relationships and breakups, forever failing in her attempts to find her soul mate like how it happens in movies. Everything about the episode, be it acting, scenes, concept is over the top and screams illogic, but nothing could be closer to reality when it comes to people being smitten by cotton candy romance shown in the movies. When I first saw her in Kannum Kannum Kollai Adithaal movie, I was quite unimpressed by Ritu and was wondering how old she looked compared to Dulquar!! But she has a knack of picking good roles and has been quite effective in her performances and her personality grows on you after a period. In this episode which starts as  “what a heck is this” only to realize early that “this is how it will end”, her performance is rightfully over the top. When she finally settles for arranged marriage with a person who is equally made like her in romance, it kinds of bring a happy completion typical to romantic movies.

It’s quite evident looking at box office numbers of hit movies that are based on romance and love, accompanied by lilting music and above all a lead pair oozing chemistry. Sharukh owed his entire lift to stardom to this genre and not surprisingly Aamir’s first hit and Salman’s biggest hits were based on the same genre as well. There was a time during the late 90’s and early 2000’s when romantic movies ruled BO across the country and in Hollywood as well, where even summer blockbusters were Rom Com based movies. People fell in love with the characters on screen and NRI weddings, NRI lifestyle driven storylines slowly started to be the de facto way of Indian life getting represented in movies, with castles being rented to depict regular households and Prom night’s getting showcased as some important, not to be missed ritual, with female leads donning costumes that would rival their western counterparts while their male leads introducing every foreign brand of designer wear. Love became a costly affair and romantic movies burgeoned in their budgets with each song location happening on a never visited place by any Indian director. Valentines’ day rose to such eminence and prominence that there hardly any movie without having a scene around that day. The over does of syrupy dialogues and saccharine sweetness, slowly gave way to the raw and almost psychotic at times barbaric visuals that we get today in movies in the name of being realistic. At times makes one wonder what worse could’ve happened had the romance genre continued its success run at BO!! At max, people would’ve been afflicted with movie equivalent of diabetes (sic)!!!