Padma

I really wanted to give this movie a better rating. Because it has got a good script, and excellent performances by all the actors. Surabhi Lakshmi, Maala Parvathi, and Dinesh Prabhakar were exceptional. Surabhi's performance is the backbone of the movie. But the weakness of the movie is that it is terribly slow and unnecessarily drawn out, especially the last act. Anoop Menon is a good writer but he is not by far a good director; he should have left that job to someone else (like V. K. Prakash with whom he has worked in "Beautiful" and "Trivandrum Lodge"). My rating for the screenplay is 8/10 and direction is 2/10, so averaging the two, the movie score becomes 5/10.

This is a good movie overall, especially the score, the acting, and most importantly the script.

The cons are primarily around the pacing and direction - if that was more tight, it would have been a masterpiece.

But as it is, it is still pretty compelling watch - just for the performances of the lead actors alone.

There are salient elements I found the movie shared with the classic - "The Painted Veil ". Especially around the dialogues around infidelity and how humans basically are not perfect and we usually put many people in a pedestal (almost giving them an almost divine reverence - but humans does make mistakes and disapppoint )

I personally know many womanizer's and all of them use this exact way of getting back to their loved ones or to the ones that they entrap. A very common tool used by men and women in their premarital phase. From what I understand, every one of them revels in the fact they tapped the other and every little victory strengthens these psychopaths to pursue more or to use that victory in other parts of their life, like in their workplace, in their personal relationships, etc. Some just lay a bigger field of illusion for the other person and facilitate them with objectives to follow, so that the other person wouldn't have the energy to focus on certain things. A very good propaganda film with typical roles reversed, and narratives molded. At best this film could be considered as a sarcastic film.