A beautiful film well worth discovering, 31 Dec 2005

By	Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews

This is basically the story of two sisters - one serious and pragmatic, the other wide-eyed and idealistic. Products of a good family, they enjoy an easy lifestyle, but all of that is put in jeopardy by the death of the girls' grandfather. Forced to leave their own home, they move to Madras and struggle to get by on almost nothing. The older daughter, Sowmya (Tabu), has trouble finding work because she is overqualified, and she is also burdened with the social stigma of being jinxed after the death of her fiancé and a string of reluctant suitors. She meets a young filmmaker in the most embarrassing of circumstances, but their possible marriage has to be delayed until such time as he makes his first film - and time and distance pose new problems that have Sowmya coming to believe that she truly is cursed in love. Meenakshi (Rai) is a hopeless romantic who fully expects the man born for her to ride in on a white horse and sweep her off her feet. She thinks she has found him in a flashy, brash stockbroker who can quote Bharathi, but he is besieged by severe financial problems and basically leaves her hanging for months on end. This is all rather disheartening to Major Bala, a family friend, who has fallen in love with her. Bala isn't a natural match for Meena; he's older, he lost a leg in the Sri Lankan campaign, and he has a tendency to turn all conversations to guns and fighting. No matter what his head tells him, though, he can't change his heart.

The film runs about two and a half hours, which is almost short for Indian cinema, but it tells a beautiful, multi-layered story full of great drama. You don't witness the kind of passionate romance that Hindi films tend to portray, but there's a realism to this story that makes it special. Mahmooty is wonderful as Bala, a bitter man who really turns his life around because of Meena. Tabu's emotional performance as the unlucky Sowmya who almost gives up on love in the interest of practicality is also marvelous. Aishwarya Rai is, of course, absolutely wonderful as Meena, although I must admit I wasn't completely enamored with her character early on. Sowyma and Neena represent sense and sensibility in their individual characters, but it is a combination of both characteristics that will finally lead them to the romance each one dreams of.

The film's music, composed by the brilliant A.R. Rahman, is excellent, although I much prefer the music of your typical Bollywood film. This music is just slightly different from what I'm used to - less energetic and heart-pounding. The music, like the film itself, just seems less energetic than what would find in a Bollywood offering. This isn't a bad thing, it's just different. As for the subtitles, I had no problem with them whatsoever. If there was any lag in my Kino DVD of this film, I surely didn't detect it. The bottom line is this: Kandukondain Kandukondain is a feast for the senses and an impassioned human drama. You just can't find storytelling like this in the canned movies coming out of Hollywood.

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