To call Once More an intense love story would be to reduce it to just one aspect that make this film wonderfully frustrating. Instead, I’d prefer to look at this story of a man named Raghuvaran (Arjun Das) as something of a cruel whodunnit. I call it that because the Raghu we first meet can barely be called a person who is well and alive. He’s a corpse, that’s just about capable of walking and talking. When we see him in constant conversation with both a priest as well as a psychiatrist, we see him grappling with spirituality and/or science to bring him alive. Instead of saying 'Raghu is...', the film trains you to say 'Raghu was…'
It’s to this nothingness that we see the entry of Anjali (Aditi Shankar). If Raghu is lifeless, Anjali is brimming with life, perhaps to an alarming extent. She knows the effect she has on people around her and before we get there, she’s the first to call herself a version of Genelia from Santhosh Subramaniam. She’s also aware that she may be perceived as someone who is out to “save” a person like Raghu, addressing her own saviour complex before we get there too.
But when they’re together, with Anjali jumping the gun to profess her love for him (she’s his college junior), the film enters into a particularly tense romance. Anjali appears to be simultaneously inflating him with enough oxygen to make life liveable, even though we’re worried she might inflate it a tad too much, leading to an explosion.
The extent of their distinctly opposite personalities reflects even in the costumes. We see her in bright, colourful shades filled with yellows, reds and oranges. She works in a bright studio filled with uppity creative types. In sharp contrast, we see Raghu is neatly combed, wearing tight-fitting clothes with the shirt fully tucked in. More than the formal attire, it looks like he’s straitjacketed by this life. He also works at a construction site, not because that’s his profession of choice, but it nonetheless fits because he is himself under construction.
The only instance when we see him feel like he fits into Aditi’s brighter world is when someone from her side, jumps ship to attempt something you’d imagine Raghu to have tried. As morbid as it is, there’s something about self-harm that brings Raghu alive, again. It’s also from this point that the film primes you for the Raghu that once was.
The straitjackets come off and so do the half smiles. In a mix of blues and flowy linen shirts and messy hair, we see him smile fully for the first time. It’s credit to the film’s writing that we see Raghu, now be the Anjali to another person. If the earlier portions of the film created a mood of gloom and tension, it evolves into a more poetic territory after this. Set entirely in North Kerala, this section also introduces also another person that is surely to make Jessie from Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa look like a saint.
If the film treads predictable paths until here, Once More detours into one of the most wonderfully frustrating stretches here. This new entrant makes you feel the film with renewed intensity. While you understand the abandonment issues that made her this person, you also feel like scratching your head wondering why she is like this. There are movie villains who’ve massacred entire tribes who feel like less terrible than this one. And that’s also why the film works so well.
Arjun Das is indistinguishable as the two Raghuvaran in one his most sincere roles yet. He pulls off the grump just as well as the happy lover boy. Aditi too is just as good, finding a new way to play a character that comes with easy comparisons. Shuffling between the naive optimism of a Vineeth Sreenivasan film (Hesham’s score is incredible) and an ultra messy Gautham Menon romance, this is a neatly narrated and ably performed ‘whodunnit’ about a man, the person who killed him and the one that brought him back alive.