SPB and Radhika meet in an interesting sequence peppered with humour. Can one imagine a love story for such a couple and can one get people engrossed into their narrative? Vasanth answers the question superbly in about an hour’s time.
In contrast, Sarada Teacher is nearing 30 and has decided not to get married as she wants to spend her life looking after her ‘deaf-mute’ parents. Vasanth gets his characters right – so we have ARR who is approaching middle age, unapologetically fat and not even having a proper vocation except possibly looking after his 10-year-old daughter, Anju. Indeed this segment may even put off many viewers from watching the gem that is to follow.
Anju and Ramesh Arvind enact college kids puppy love romance with all its awkwardness and predictability. And the contrast of the narrative does make the opening sequence seem pedestrian and juvenile.
Overall the movie runs for nearly two and half hours, but the first forty-five minutes could have been easily avoided as the focus of the story is ARR and Sarada Teacher. It is an offbeat love story between two ordinary real life characters – ARR (essayed by singer SPB) is a middle-aged widower and Sarada Teacher (essayed by Radhika) is a mature and educated daughter of a ‘deaf-mute’ couple played by Poornam Viswanathan and Srividya. And it has a rare sensitivity of two loving adults who let go of their relationship because the child feels insecure and is not ready to accept anyone else in the place of her mother. I regard it to be so as the story has no villains or overboard melodrama, typical of most Tamil films in those days. In my view it is his best work and a true tribute to his ‘gurunathar’- the great KB. Released way back in 1990, Keladi Kanmani marks the directorial début of Vasanth who had assisted K Balachander in many movies earlier.