Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu movie review: Bhavana and Sharafudheen are love, warmth and joy together

Cast: Bhavana, Sharafudheen, Saniya Rafi, Anarkali Nazar, Ashokan, Merlin, Sadhiq, Shebin Benson, Adhri Joe, Divya

Director: Adhil Maimoonath Asharaf

Language: Malayalam 

If you can get past the intimidating spelling of Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu, you will find that the pronunciation is not the tongue twister it threatens to be, and the meaning – My Brother Was Once In Love – is quite straightforward. (Note: Ntikkakkakkoru = Ente Ikkakkakku Oru, and Premandaarnnu is to be spoken the way it’s written.) While the name seems more complicated than it is, the film is the opposite: more layered than appearances suggest.

The title comes from the narration by a little girl called Mariam (Saniya Rafi). Jimmy is her Ikkakka (older brother). Despite the years separating them, they are good friends. Mariam is intelligent yet (whew!) her precociousness is not annoying. Others occasionally take over the narration from her without the shifts serving much purpose – since they do not interfere with the flow of the storytelling though, I guess the superfluity of this element can be shrugged off.

Jimmy (Sharafudheen) once loved and lost a woman called Nithya (Bhavana). The latter’s return to town after a long time changes the course of his life and hers.

Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu could easily be underrated because it does not make a song and dance about its politics. For one, in this Hindu-Muslim union, Jimmy is the Muslim and Nithya the Hindu. The far more moneyed and powerful Hindi film industry was afraid (or unwilling?) to depict such relationships even in earlier decades when majoritarianism was less in your face. Much before the term “love jihad” was thrust into our vocabularies, north India’s proprietorial attitude towards women was evident in how most inter-community romances in Hindi cinema featured a Hindu man while the woman was the minority community member (Muslim or Christian) in the relationship. Kerala is no stranger to majoritarian patriarchy but it is also blessed with filmmakers who routinely risk antagonising conservatives. They do so via cinema ranging from the stark, dark and edgy to the apparently light, unobtrusively profound. Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu falls into the latter category.

When we encounter Nithya and Jimmy in the present, their religious identities are clear but not overly underlined. We see that they and most of their family members have evolved beyond what they were when the two were younger, and though some tensions linger, they’re still evolving. Many unpleasant discussions you might expect in this scenario were over and done with years back. The film does not serve up expository dialogues in heavy-handed flashbacks, sermons, screaming matches, a dark palette and sombre music to spell out the strain caused by their differing backgrounds. Instead we get pretty actors in pretty clothes in a pretty setting awash with pretty music, playing characters who have mature conversations, suffer heartbreak and intermittently display a sense of humour.

This tone and visual grammar reflect the reality that those who shoulder crushing crosses do not necessarily wear their truth on their sleeve. Nithya certainly does not, and it’s a while before Jimmy learns of the hell she’s been through when they were apart.

This is a romantic drama yet not solely that. It explores a spectrum of relationships: parents who try to fulfil their dreams through their children, loving siblings, supportive friends, romantic partners who become supportive friends, a broken marriage, a continuing spark between a senior couple – relationships in which one party tries to control the other, another in which one party has the guts to fight for them but the other chickens out, relationships that grow with the individuals involved, relationships that stand the test of time.

This is a film about second chances in love yet not solely that either. It’s about a second chance at life in general – with romance, with family, with careers, with peace of mind.

Written, edited and directed by Adhil Maimoonath Asharaf, with Vivek Bharathan, Sabaridas Thottingal and Jai Vishnu credited for additional screenplay and dialogues, Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu is a self-effacing film. It gives the impression of being simple, but it is not. It wades through multiple tricky issues without becoming a film about the societal problems its characters contend with.

Although the film starts out with Mariam and her Ikkakka, Nithya gets equal space and depth so that by the end, I almost forgot that she enters the picture later than he does.

(Spoiler alert for this paragraph) Malayalam commercial cinema has for years normalised intimate partner abuse. The re-release of Spadikam (1995) this month is a depressing reminder of how long this has been going on. In this context, it is a relief that some films in recent years have taken a clear stand against all such violence. That said, last year’s Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey presented an exterior view of its female lead. Unlike that film, Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu and 2021’s The Great Indian Kitchen delve into the woman’s psyche. While I wish the script had elaborated on Nithya’s reason for not wanting to cite spousal abuse as grounds for divorce from her husband, it is still wonderful to see that she is not Jaya from Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey – she’s not a male writer’s fantasy of a woman survivor, but a real person whose reactions largely mirror real women in terrible circumstances. It is especially notable that she is written as a woman of courage from beginning to end – from her first innings with Jimmy, through to her refusal to be shamed by anyone for hooking up with him again, and the dressing down she gives even him for trying to be a saviour when she needed an ally. Nithya’s characterisation defies the widespread notion that women who stay in abusive marriages are cowards. Her exit too defies society’s make-believe Nirbhaya (The Fearless One) and the cinematic stereotype of a woman as a Durga-esque warrior. (Spoiler alert ends)

Over the years, it’s been weird to see the number of Malayalam films seriously hinting at romantic relationships being kindled between tiny children who then turn into the film’s adult hero and heroine. Fortunately here, although Nithya and Jimmy meet as kids, all we see is that he notices her – they go on to be friends, grow into an attraction and fall in love.

Bhavana and Sharafudheen are a perfect match. Her speaking eyes and mobile face convey the lifetime of emotions Nithya experiences through this narrative. Every second she has on screen is an explanation for why this charismatic artiste has been so sorely missed during her five-year absence from Malayalam cinema. Sharafudheen as Jimmy is like this film – easy to take for granted because he makes everything look easy.

The leads share such remarkable chemistry, that they get us to believe in Nithya and Jimmy as a couple. In addition to the fine writing and acting involved, the success of their pairing also owes much to Arun Rushdie’s camerawork. The framing – observant yet not intrusive – lends an air of great intimacy to their scenes alone together, causing those moments to overshadow even his beautiful images of the locations in which the story is set.

In its use of music, Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu is a traditional Indian screen romance. It’s a genre that few filmmakers do well these days, but debutant director Adhil achieves just the right mix by not overdoing the insertion of songs or ever allowing the filming of Nithya and Jimmy in those scenes to become cheesy. No song is particularly distinctive, but the tunes and the voices are soothing, the placement of these numbers (credited to Nishant Ramteke, Paul Mathews and Joker Blues) is never disruptive, and the lyrics feel like part of the narration.

While Nithya and Jimmy are the focus, some smaller characters too are well developed. The character I didn’t fully buy into is Fida, for no fault of actor Anarkali Nazar. Of course potential lovers may transition into friends, but the manner in which they switch from being a possible couple to Fida becoming the person in whom Jimmy confides his love troubles is unconvincing. Likewise, there’s a physically abusive psychopath in the script who, so we are told, masks his true colours in the presence of everyone but his victims – yet on the only occasions when we see him with others, he is being aggressive. There is no natural progression towards his ultimate damning angry outburst which, while striking in itself, would have been well served if the lead-up to it had been fleshed out. This is unlike the writing of Jimmy’s father Abdulkhadar who is given time and room for his evolution that actor Ashokan captures so well. Another satellite player who gets her place in the sun is Merlin as Jimmy’s mother Khadeeja – the articulation of her joy when he visits the house during Ramadan is a compelling kick-off to a very important scene with the family.

Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu is more than its attractive packaging and sunny surface. Its protagonists have both known stifling relationships, many of its characters are in turmoil, yet the believability of its denouement left me with a warm, happy feeling. This and the sparks between the leads make it an endearing love story of the kind we just don’t get enough of these days. So while the good news is that Bhavana is back in Malayalam cinema, the great news is that that’s not the only good news – she’s back in a film worth rooting for.

Rating: 3.5 (out of 5 stars) 

Ntikkakkakkoru Premandaarnnu is in theatres

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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