Alaipayuthey (2000)

The real hero of this movie is A.R. Rahman's music (fun fact: this movie almost didn't have the legendary songs), and I would go so far as to say that it's up there in his top 10 best soundtracks. 

My other favourite bits of the movie were Shalini (killing it in one of her best performances ever) and those early romance bits between Shalu and Maddy. Those warmed up my heart so much, and left a huge smile on my face, making me reminisce about how it feels to fall in love in those precious first weeks. The train sequences were superbly done, and really made me root for the couple. I mean, as much as I could, considering that we didn't really know why they fell in love in the first place. What I'm trying to say is that even though the film is weakly written, the technical aspects almost made up for that. Keyword being "almost".

The movie really begins to unravel in the second half, with Maddy gaslighting Shalini to the point where I was genuinely scared she was going to have a proper meltdown. It made me so mad to remember how much people had romanticised Maddy's character, instead of calling him (and Mani Ratnam) out on his BS. I don't even have the words to express how frustrated I was by the ending- Shalini should have dumped his sorry ass and moved on to become one of the top doctors in Chennai. Ugh.

In conclusion, Rahman and Shalini win. Watch the movie for them. And also I guess to relive some cute first love moments. But that's pretty much it.  

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