‘Mudhal Nee Mudivum Nee’ review: Kishen Das does well in this rambling tale of high-school romance

After a nostalgia-evoking breezy first half, the film meanders and fizzles out in the second

There is a section of the Indian online community on Twitter and elsewhere that cherishes the ‘90s more than any other era. These people, who identify themselves as ‘90s kids’, feel life was slower and simpler then. They look back at the objects, people, places, and pop culture of that era with a heavy sense of longing.

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The first hour or so of Darbuka Siva’s debut directorial, Mudhal Nee Mudivum Nee, is for this crowd. For it effectively captures the zeitgeist of the ‘90s – the ‘90s of middle-class Madras, to be precise – through a bunch of high-school kids. You find boys in loose full-sleeved shirts (buttoned up and well-tucked in) and trousers, girls in churidars with the sleeves coming up to the middle of their arms, a buzzing Spencers Plaza, an annual diary converted into a ‘slam book’, a guy trying to find the fate of his potential romance through ‘FLAMES’, phone booths, Yamaha RX 100 motorcycles, cassettes, VHS tapes, walkmans, and so on…