Name: Paris Cafe review: a strong marriage drama spread too thin
Item: Paris Cafe
Rating: 3

Guru Somasundaram and Anumol make a buried honour-killing secret hurt, but Saraj Seelan's debut juggles three romances and lets its sharpest conflict drift.

Gautham (Guru Somasundaram) and Thara (Anumol) have been married for 25 years and still tease each other like people who enjoy the company. Then a photograph in a Paris cafe pushes him to confess what he did years ago: as a government doctor, under threat, he signed a post-mortem report that helped bury an honour killing. Thara walks out. It is a strong, uncomfortable premise, and Paris Cafe is at its best when it stays inside that marriage.

Debutant writer-director Saraj Seelan gets the moral shading right. Gautham’s fear is understandable without making his choice forgivable, and Guru Somasundaram plays him with a soft voice and a rumpled decency, a loving father who has lived comfortably on top of a terrible compromise. He sometimes slips into a comic register in scenes that need weight. Anumol is the film’s spine. Thara won’t accept remorse as a substitute for consequences, and Anumol keeps that anger personal without letting it tip into speechifying.

Twenty-five years of easy affection, before one confession changes the temperature of the house

The dialogue has less faith in them than it should. Conversations circle points already made, and Gautham’s explanations grow longer without growing more revealing. The film also refuses to stay put. Their daughter Oly (Archana Kumar) flies in from the US with her boyfriend Kavin (Vijay Vishwa), declaring that her own future can wait until her parents make up, while a third couple, Rajkumar (Sai Vicky) and Shyamala (Nayana Sai), carries the honour-killing story itself. Archana brings some bounce and Vijay Vishwa is pleasant company, but three love stories leave none of them room to grow.

The daughter and her boyfriend turn peacemakers, one of three romances the film tries to juggle

The doomed young couple, who should be the film’s moral centre, get the thinnest writing. Their romance begins with a slap and turns into love within days without a real conversation, and the caste-proud father (Bipin) is the villain from a dozen such films. The Paris and US scenes, played against obviously artificial backdrops, don’t help.

A wary glance at the doorway: once the old secret surfaces, home stops feeling safe

K’s background score is the pleasant surprise, restrained enough to let a scene breathe at a time when most films shout, and at under two hours the film never overstays its welcome. It is sharpest when Thara complicates the happy ending everyone else is chasing. Oly wants her parents back together. Her mother knows that making peace at home does nothing for the couple who died outside it.