‘Love Always’ series review: A well-intentioned story and potent concept undone by juvenile treatment

Jayaprakash and Jayasudha in a still from ‘Love Always’

Life is a one-way street. By the time we realise who we have become and all that this journey has been about, decades could have passed without a trace. Anyone would wish to relive at least part of their life once more, but the grace of life lies in its finitude. But what if you could experience life all over again? In fiction, you can.

Imagine this: you are well into your twilight years; you realise your marriage lost its colour decades ago; your granddaughter has enrolled on college; your sons are busy with their careers and personal lives. Then, all of a sudden, through some unknown magical phenomenon, your physical body transforms into how it was 40 years ago, before all that backache, before diabetes restricted your diet, and when you still had a lot of life ahead of you.

This is more or less the story of the Korean webtoon, We’re So Over… Or Not, which Tamil filmmaker Madhumitha has adapted into the latest JioHotstar web series, Love Always. The conceit at the centre is a juicy piece of imagination; however, even after witnessing characters undergo that journey, I am still left thinking about all the possibilities remaining for one who gets to live again. I find myself searching for the depth such a story deserves and the quirkiness the text should have organically lent to it. Where’s the irreverence of a second youth? Where’s the thrill of meeting someone you knew all your life under a new physical identity?

Gouri Kishan in a still from ‘Love Always’

For a story with such an outlandish idea, Love Always hardly tries to attain even a degree of verisimilitude. You need to suspend your disbelief and buy into the supernatural idea that an elderly couple have magically transformed into their younger selves. However, the series is so eager to tell you the larger repercussions of this transformation on the family and the colourless marriage that it treats the central idea in a strange, off-handed fashion.

If we were like Manjula (Jayasudha) and Kannan (Jayaprakash) — transformed into our younger selves (Gouri Kishan and Ramzan Muhammed) — we would need a whole day, if not longer, to shake off the waves of emotion that hit us: how did this happen? Could this mean that we no longer have the diseases we carry? What are the social, emotional, personal and legal ramifications of this? Will our family ever believe us, and if not, how will we convince them that we are indeed their parents and grandparents? Love Always keeps taking the easy way out and treats its selling point with surprising immaturity. As a result, we get a series of unfunny comedy scenes.

Sure, we do see Kannan try a table full of dishes after he realises that he need not worry about his blood pressure, diabetes, or any other ailments. He beams at the discovery that his knees are young again, but such moments amount to little more than fillers. Consider, too, the prospect of an elderly couple whose sex life has long since dwindled, suddenly finding themselves in younger bodies. It could have been an intriguing avenue to explore. It is disappointing, then, that even when we see hints of renewed sexual chemistry, the series treats it with a rather coy indifference. A more nuanced take would show what Manjula goes through when her wise elderly mind, which wants a divorce from Kannan, struggles to resist the bodily desires of her younger self. You might wonder if this is even a fair expectation given that Love Always wants to be a different kind of series entirely. Still, it is time Tamil filmmakers worked towards sex-positivity more sensitively — and a series with a central idea like age-reversal cannot ignore that altogether, pandering to “sanitised television.”

Ramzan Muhammad in a still from ‘Love Always’

Shockingly, none of the episodes cares about the workings of this magical phenomenon that affected Manjula and Kannan. Even when they figure out they could transform back to their older selves, they hardly take a moment to investigate how this ‘power’ could be used. Though deprived of such genre pleasures, we do get a neatly set-up emotional story about a family learning its own identity. Director Madhumitha comes into her own in the softer moments amidst all the dramatic turns of events. A shot of a mother watching her estranged son from afar, talking gleefully to her younger self, is a stellar moment.

The dynamic between Manjula and her younger son Vignesh (Suraj) is handled quite well, as are the moments when Kannan shows an inkling to rewrite fate by becoming a lawyer. The most impressive piece of writing is in telling why Manjula wants a divorce from Kannan. This is handled with as much sensitivity as you would expect from Madhumitha, but even here, you wish a third character, Meera (played by Maya Krishnan), hadn’t reduced it to just another triangle love story. After a few episodes, the three characters meet at a moment of reckoning, having to fight for themselves. Manjula has lost decades of her life in this marriage, and Meera has waited decades for the love of her life, while the man in their lives is waging his own battle against time. This is the emotional peak the series puts a lot of effort into, but the haphazard writing works against itself.

Whenever the series moves away from its emotional beats, it tests your patience, and it takes a lot of will to stop yourself from fast-forwarding through a lot of the dreary stretches. Many nice ideas remain underdeveloped. For instance, when the couple go to college, I was eager to see the series explore the huge generation gap. Or at least for Manjula to do some of what she wasn’t allowed to do back in her time. But Love Always settles for telling its rather predictable, damp story. You see every single twist coming from miles away. Add the washed-out colour grading that makes the series look like a television soap, and Love Always feels like a series coming a decade too late.

Towards the end of the series, you might strangely wish for it to have been much shorter and longer at the same time, a chief sign of a series that failed to realise its own potential.

Love Always is currently streaming on JioHotstar

Tamil cinema / Indian cinema / television