Debutant writer-director Prabhuram Vyas’s Tamil gem Lover is the kind of unassuming neo-classic that could easily slip through the crack.It was released in theatres in February this year. It is now streaming on Disney-Hotstar. It did get some admiring reviews on release. But most reviews have missed the one vital point that director Vyas makes without underlining it: toxic relationship are often based on the mutual assumption of the couple that they cannot do without one another even if they cannot ‘do’ with one another. At one point Divya(Sri Gouri Priya) tells her friend, “I am afraid of what he would do if I leave him.”
This legitimate fear haunts a majority of toxic relationships : what if he/she does something drastic? I remember an abused husband(let’s not forget, toxicity works both ways) telling me , “I would have left her long back. But what if she does something to herself, and leaves a note blaming me?” I wasn’t sure if he feared her death or the note.
That conversation came back to me as I sat through Lover , frozen in my seat by the sheer volume of venom between Divya and Arun(K Manikandan).Were they ever in love? Did they ever share a healthy relationship based on mutual respect?
I don’t think Arun, played with immense credibility by Manikandan, is capable of respect for any other humanbeing. He is either simmering with rage about Divya spending time with her friends or whining and crying about his life ending if she leaves him(which she should have done long ago, though then, sadly, this film wouldn’t have been possible).
Looking at Arun’s self-powered egocentrism I was reminded of Hemanth Rao’s masterpiece Sapta Sagaradaache Ello and Manu(Rakshit Shetty)’s sublime spiritual selfdestructive devotion to Priya(Rukmini Vasanth). Divya in Lover is so much like Priya in Sapta Sagaradaache Ello, I wonder what Divya’s life would have been if she had Manu in her life instead of Arun.
Lover doesn’t allow the narrative to stretch into hypothetical happiness. Writer-director Prabhuram Vyas(what a remarkable debut!) builds a bunch of powerful episodes showing Arun’s temper-management issues and Divya’s tolerance level being tested beyond endurance, not once or twice, but repeatedly.
More than anything else, Lover should open up a national debate on why such a toxic relationship isn’t terminated sooner rather than later by the victim. Divya’s suffering in trying to be a “good soul mate” to Arun is exceptionally mirrored in Sri Gouri Priya’s performance.
Not all is perfect in this germane powerful drama on a venomous relationship. Some passages in the dirge to a doomed alliance are unnecessarily convenient to the plot. Why would Divya and her friends agree to take Arun on their holiday gift for her birthday, knowing fully well he would mess it up?
Also, the ending, though apt and moving, is a little too “neat”, as if the director wanted to give his scathing searing exposition on a messy relationship a cinematic closure.
That is where cinema parts ways with real life.
