'Ithiri Neram' Movie Review: Roshan Mathew and Zarin Shihab Have Sparkling Chemistry In This Night To Remember

When we meet Aneesh (Roshan Mathew) and Anjana (Zarin Shihab) for the first time, Aneesh refers to this ex-girlfriend of his as… Anjana. They’re meeting after seven long years, after their respective heartbreaks, and yet through their easy comfort, we begin to feel like “Anjana” is still too formal a name for Aneesh to be calling her. It’s the easiest name to shorten to Anju and yet, by the end of this meeting, when we realise Anish’s Anjana has now become Anju again, we cannot remember when this shift happened.

It’s the feeling of having to catch up with an old friend we once knew everything about. Anjana is in Thiruvananthapuram for just the day, and she chooses these remaining hours to call on Aneesh, who runs a podcast in the capital. But the timing couldn’t have been worse for Aneesh. It’s his son’s baptism the next day, and Anjana phones him when he’s on his way to a drinking party with his two male colleagues.

Not that Aneesh hesitates to go to this meeting. He cancels plans, untucks his shirt and runs to her, that too to rendezvous as anachronistic as the public library. When they meet after these many years, so much seems to have changed in both of them, even if nothing really has. She jokes to Aneesh and compliments him on his new bearded look. In his reply, Aneesh looks up at Anjana to joke about how her clean-shaven face looks just as nice. It’s a corny joke, meant to sound as corny as it does. But when they pause before they break into laughter, it’s as good as all those years of distance getting wiped away.

But this distance wasn’t as much a result of societal pressures as it was self-inflicted. They were both college students when they began to date and were still too young to think about the future. Yet so much was left unsaid that it makes for a magical night when they meet again. Call it serendipity or fate, but it had to rain on that night. What was to be a casual meeting at a cafe turns into a night at a local bar thanks to the rain. Back when the two were dating, Anjana was still a teetotaller and a nonsmoker. But as the years have passed, she can hold her drink, and so can Aneesh. 

This decision to drink, even narratively, gives Ithiri Neram (A Little While) an urgency you do not see in conversational films like 96 or the Before... series. Sips of rum take the edge off, and they’re not guarded anymore. With each drink, they go back to being the couple they once were, bickering and arguing, bringing us up to speed on reasons why they were once together and reasons why they drifted apart. And as the night gets hazy, we too let go of any judgment, allowing for Aneesh and for Anjana to spend their one last night together.

By the halfway mark, with multiple drinks down, we’re seduced into their world and into the possibilities of this night. When Anjana’s phone rings, Aneesh realises that she hasn’t changed her ringtone in all these years. It’s a narrative device the film uses cleverly to underline the fact that both are still stuck exactly where they once were, no matter how hard they’ve tried to move on. 

Yet, despite what the film achieves by engrossing us in their inner selves, one wonders why it takes a slapstick turn into comedy. From a profound film about that one last goodbye, Ithiri Neram detours into silliness as Aneesh’s two colleagues join in as trouble finds its way again for the couple. Their soulful conversations dry up too, placing an external glance into a relationship that felt above judgment a few minutes ago. 

Maybe the point of the film was to subvert the pattern we notice in similar films, giving us the notion that such nights happen far away from reality. Ithiri Neram begins by planting us in a world full of magic, only for that world to be brought down to earth, filled with morality, moral policing, and the Kerala police. But can people like Aneesh and Anjana ever live without each other? Or will their lives always feel incomplete, no matter how perfect it may appear from the outside? Somewhere through this night, as Anjana turns into Anju again, we, too, wish for them the strength to move on, even if it means the occasional phone call from the past, in which the ringtone remains the same. Despite the detours, Ithiri Neram leaves you feeling both the pleasures of returning to a dreamlike moment in the past and the pain that only long-lost love can make you feel, albeit for a little while.