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MUDDLED FINISH: Kannum Kannum

‘Kannum Kannum’ gets so many things right that watching it plod to its deeply unsatisfactory ending leaves you wishing you could go back in time and ask writer and director G. Marimuthu to fix it. Then it could be the sweet, touching love story it almost is.

It tells the story of Sathyamurthy (Prasanna), an engineer in Chennai, and Anandhi (Udhayathara), a student in Kuttralam, who begins writing letters to each other after he sees her poem in a magazine. He is amazed because it is almost identical to an unpublished one of his own. Of course, they fall in love — the rapidity with which that happens is one of the less convincing aspects of the movie — and Murthy sets off to Kuttralam to try and meet her.

But he only knows her as Shenbagavalli (her pen name), and she unknowingly departs on a two-week college trip just as he arrives. In a strange quirk of fate, he ends up staying with her family — her father (Vijayakumar), three sisters and older brother. An orphan himself, he is drawn to their togetherness and warmth, and becomes an honorary anna to the girls.

This portion of the movie is one of the best — the photography of Kuttralam is gorgeous, all greenery, waterfalls and soft mist. The direction, especially of the family interactions, is delightfully natural, as is the dialogue. You genuinely feel for Murthy as he watches their togetherness wistfully from a slight distance, and when tragedy strikes in the form of the older brother’s death, it truly makes an emotional impact. Now, Murthy finds himself having to take the brother’s place and care for the girls. What will happen when he finds out that Shenbagavalli is in fact the youngest sister of his newly adopted family?

Prasanna turns in a wonderful performance as the sensitive, dutiful Murthy. Just as the script never veers into melodrama and opts for emotional restraint, Prasanna too is understated but nonetheless extremely effective.

Newcomer Udhayathara unfortunately fails to infuse a similar charm into her role — it is partly that her sulky, tantrum-throwing character is less sympathetic, but she is also rather stilted. Vadivelu’s comedy track keeps you laughing. It provides a good contrast to the emotionally-charged main story. The only thing that stops this sensitive, heartfelt movie from being a great one is the last half an hour — which drags irresolutely — and the ending. The writer neither opts for a sweetly romantic conclusion-which is where it seems to be heading until three quarters of the way through — nor does he opt for grand tragedy. In choosing the middle road, the movie merely ends up being unsatisfactory. And that is the biggest tragedy of all.

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