Love, as portrayed onscreen, usually falls into two categories. Either it is the loud, bombastic, over-the-top variety, drenched in glamour and customised for that “warm, fuzzy feeling”. Or it is the subdued kind, usually steeped in the drudgery of everyday life. Both types are susceptible to opposing dangers. In the first, the danger is of excess―too much of bubble-wrapped fantasy and song-and-dance escapism. In the second, the danger is of sparseness―too little of melodrama and whimsy. Modern Love Chennai firmly falls in the second category. It is most comfortable in its own ordinariness. It tells gentle, slice-of-life stories set in houses with peeling walls, dark alleyways, crowded metros and grubby street corners. Its heroes are pani puri sellers, biscuit makers, construction workers and college professors. No shining Lotharios or tower-trapped princesses in this show.
And that’s just the problem with it―it is too slice-of-life, almost to the point of blandness. It lacks that cardinal quality that usually determines onscreen success: Character. Most of the stories of Modern Love Chennai take an oft-portrayed romantic trope―the adolescent girl with a crush on the new boy, the woman who gets her heart broken by a crook, the cinema-obsessed teen in love with the idea of love―and marinates it in some music and pan shots of city life. There are occasional sparks of genius in the writing, set ablaze by some excellent performances. But ultimately, the show is too monotonous, too lacking in colour.
Stylistically and structurally, there is an attempt at variety. There is, for example, the straightforward and linear style of storytelling as in the second episode titled ‘Blur’, about Devi (T.J. Bhanu), a woman who is going blind. As she tries to build a life with the man she loves, she begins to understand the implications of her gradually worsening eyesight. Even as the story plunges its heroine into darkness, it shines light on everything that darkness is taking from her. Devi does not bemoan not being able to see the seven wonders of the world. She bemoans not being able to pack her daughter’s lunch, sign her report card or bathe her without getting soap in her eyes.
Then there is the more experimental style of storytelling, like in the last episode titled ‘Memory is a Bird’. It is about a broken relationship between Sam (Wamiqa Gabbi) and K (PB). But is the relationship really broken if K who breaks it loses his memory? The story is told in a surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness style in keeping with the theme. The dark filters and existential dialogues enhance the tone. Flitting between the past and the present, the plot is as elusive as memory itself.
But no matter how stylistic the packaging, the substance is lacking in this show. Towards the end, there is a scene in which K wonders about what happens to the lovers in a film after it ends. “In the theatre, when we hear the applause and see the curtains fall, we understand that it is the end,” he says. “But would the characters know that? Would they have known that this is their ‘And they lived happily-ever-after’ moment? Does that mean that whatever happened afterwards was not interesting?” I don’t know whether the characters of this show lived happily ever after. The truth is, I didn’t really care.