To err is human. This line is shown on the big screen even before the film title rolls. The film ends with another line: to forgive is divine. In between these two statements, the director weaves in a film that keeps you engrossed most of the time.
Oru Kuppai Kadhai kick-starts in a shocking manner: a man asks a cop the route to get to an address, and the next day, he surrenders at the police station, claiming that he has committed a murder. The story cuts to flashback mode.
That man is Kumar (choreographer Dinesh as an actor), a trash collector who is immensely proud of his job, while others aren’t. He’s looking around for a girl for marriage and no one wants to give a go-ahead because of the profession he’s in. Finally, he finds a girl in Valparai — to whom he hides the fact that he’s a trash collector — and ties the knot.
- Genre: Drama
- Director: Kaali Rangasamy
- Cast: Dinesh, Manisha Yadav, Yogi Babu
- Storyline: A trash collector has to marry and lead a happy life, despite people looking down upon his job
Life is smooth until one day the wife (Manisha Yadav as Poongothai) discovers that she’s pregnant. It’s on the same day she discovers the lies her husband has told her. Madness breaks in the household.
A few months later, they move into a slightly bigger apartment — much to the happiness of Poongothai. But she cannot get over the fact that her husband is a garbage collector, and slowly, finds herself getting attracted to her neighbour Arjun (Sujo Mathew). This leads to confusion in not just her life, but her husband’s too, which forms the crux of the plot.
The storyline is certainly not a “ kuppai kadhai ”, but the execution is, at times. The staging of a few scenes, especially those set in the urban upper-class milieu, lacks fizz and comes across like one of those serials in television. The dialogues also put you off (which husband tells his wife: “ Unakku Theeratha Thunbam Kuduthuten ”?) most of the time.
As Kumar, Dinesh master gets a well-written role, and while he looks the part, the acting leaves much to be desired. There’s a key scene in which he’s standing next to a dead body and he doesn’t emote much. It’s evident he isn’t very comfortable in front of the camera. Manisha Yadav gets in a better performance as someone caught between what she has and what she wants, while Yogi Babu provides some comic relief in the initial scenes in the film. Composer Joshua Sridhar is in good form in the background score — check out the flute portions when Kumar sets eyes on Poongothai for the first time — but the songs are too urban to go with the visual setting on screen.
Director Kaali Rangasamy’s Oru Kuppai Kadhai would have made a better book than a film. The storyline is enough to keep you interested.
