Annakkodi

Synopsis: Annakkodi (Karthika) and Kodiveeran (Lakshman) fall in love but her mom refuses to accept the match as he is from a lower caste. Meanwhile, fate lands Annakodi in the custody of Sadaiyan (Manoj K Bharathi) and his lecherous father. Will the lovers reunite?

Review: It is always difficult to watch a great director in decline and the first response that 'Annakkodi', Bharathirajaa’s return to a genre that he made his own (the village movie), evokes is one of disappointment. This is a director who has managed to astonish us time and again with his path-breaking films and you feel a tinge of sadness seeing him struggle to give us a feel of the places and its people. Part of the blame lies in the characterization and the casting. Lakshman never convinces us that he belongs in this universe, while Karthika gets a hang of things only towards the end.

Their romance, which is the pillar on which the film stands, is insipid and the scenes establishing it (hide and seek behind a rock!) feel dated and a few (including one involving the sucking of fingers) even make you cringe. There are things that seem interesting, but both the writing and the acting let them down. It takes a reckless sort of bravado to make a slipper the symbol of the lead’s love. We understand why Kodiveeran cherishes the slipper that Annakkodi lent him during their first meeting, but Bharathirajaa overdoes this by turning it into a deity-like object. It is in stark contrast to the way he works Annakkodi’s souvenir — a shirt she gifted to her lover — into the story. It finds its way back to her and even saves her from humiliation at one stage, and we buy this part of the melodrama because it is convincingly set up.

You also wish the director had done away with the padding in the first half as the second half has some meat to it. For starters, there is Manoj K Bharathi who channels the roughish streak he displayed in 'Alli Arjuna' to make his character Sadaiyan the only enjoyable one in the film. He suffers from erectile dysfunction following an incident in his childhood. This leads him to adopt a false bravado which, when revealed for what it really is, turns him into a raging monster. That his father is a perennial womanizer, even lusting after his daughter-in-law, only fuels this rage.

For a brief duration in the second half — from the time when Sadaiyan murders his dad to imprisoning his wife -- we get a glimpse of the Bharathirajaa of old but then comes the indifferently staged climax, and our spirit sags again.