Swasika plays a widow in her forties, and her two grown-up sons decide that she needs a partner. This creates all sorts of trouble in their village. The film could have been a moving story about women of a certain age who face the cruelty of patriarchy, but the muddled, over-dramatic narration doesn’t help. That’s the quick review. A more detailed analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
Sasi’s new film, Nooru Saami, takes its title from a song in Sasi’s older film, Pichaikaaran. That had lyrics like “Nooru saamigal irundhaalum / amma unai pol aagiduma.” Even here, we get a song that goes “Thannai thiriyaakki than kanava neruppaakki oliya velakkaa koduppaa”. The deification of the mother is not new to Tamil cinema, and yes, the widow played by Swasika here ( named Selvi) is everything a mother ought to be in a village in Tamil cinema. She has two boys that she works hard to provide an education for. But there’s a difference. She is alone. She speaks to the fan as though it is her friend. And most interestingly, she admits that she has physical desires. In a solid line, she says that even if she had killed her husband, she’d end up with 10 years punishment. But now that he died due to fate, she faces lifelong punishment.
The battle to get this mother married again is the story – and it is a battle. At first, the sons are disgusted. They have to battle the patriarchy that’s inbuilt in them. And many years later, when they do come around, the mother says she is no longer interested. She is probably scared that she may lose her sons again if they change their minds. The other battle is with the village, and the weakly written villain played by Balaji Sakthivel. They will not tolerate widow remarriage. They ask what will happen if other widows start asking to get married again! Even a young widow, someone who’s lost her husband when she’s barely 20, tells Selvi, “Once we become a mother, that is probably the only role we have to play for the rest of our lives.” The third battle is with the extended family, which includes Selvi’s brother, played by Karunas. They almost get to the point of an honour killing.
In a movie culture filled with macho heroes and stories about young love, it’s a small miracle that films like Thaai Kizhavi and Nooru Saami exist. When Selvi’s younger son says his mother does not need a husband because he will look after her like a queen, the older son replies that this is exploitation in the name of “thaai paasam”. Finally, someone said it! But how you wish these films were better! There’s a point here that we live in an age of technology so advanced that something like widow remarriage should not even be a subject of debate. But this point is brought out through an absurd subplot that involves a family of YouTubers. There are more odd choices like Selvi facing a wild boar and being saved by a Christian woman named Motcham, which means salvation. Lijomol Jose plays a nun who advises Selvi’s older son. The screenplay keeps bringing in these religious elements, but they go nowhere.
But the biggest problem is that Sasi never finds the right balance of the so-called commercial elements. There’s some really bad comedy. There’s a thriller element at the beginning that’s too sensational for the grounded story that follows. The two sons get love interests that are generic at best. The writing appears restless. At one point, Selvi is humiliated by a moneylender due to a longstanding loan, and this is a big scene – but in the very next scene, the loan is repaid and you wonder what the fuss was all about. Everything’s broad and at a superficial level, and the film functions like a compressed mega-serial. The performances are functional, though it’s nice to see a film where a mother with strands of silver hair has to decide if she wants to marry a man with a grey beard. (Vijay Antony plays this character.) But even here, this man is so good, he’s practically a god. In the end, it’s nice to see the real-life couple this story is based on, but they deserved a better movie.
