Review of movie Padi Padi Leche Manasu

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Rating:2/5

The beauty and the curse of love stories is that they are identifiable and predictable at the same time. Love stories strike a chord when storytellers make the tale feel relevant for the times. Unfortunately director Hanu Raghavapudi isn't one among them. He takes a spectator into a fantasy world of sorts, of the journey of two opposites.

The backdrop is a classic one, it's a fit-for-nothing guy Surya and the girl Vaishali's a reasonably smart medical student. This is Kolkata in its monsoons and love is about to blossom. Surya masks his identity to make Vaishali fall for him. There's a mythological connection about how Rukmini admires Lord Krishna without knowing the latter in person. The director takes this cue to treat this like an epic romance but loses sight of logic soon, so much that the romance begins to feel outlandish. You nearly fall for the great visuals but this isn't the story that should have been mounted on this grand canvas.

This is another film where stalking is glorified, the guy chases and follows the girl so much that the latter is left without an option but to love him. After this problematic trope, the director takes the story to Nepal and builds a conflict in the relationship through an earthquake. That indeed seems poetic for an idea, but in terms of execution, Padi Padi Leche Manasu falls flat. An entire thread about retrograde amnesia is stuffed into the choppy narrative soon. The average-fare is further let down by the jerky narration in the second hour.