A married man meets his ex-lover on a train. Following that is a series of personal complications.

Theera Kadhal is a film that attempts to stir emotions by exploring the subject of rekindled love. While the premise is not novel, there are moments in the film that transport us back to individuals we miss in our lives. Those expecting a more in-depth and nuanced examination of the topic, on the other hand, may be disappointed.

Life has taken its course for Gautham (Jai) and Aaranya (Aishwarya Rajesh) since their breakup in college. Gautham is married to Vandhana (Sshivada), and the couple has a delightful young girl named Aarthi (Vriddhi Vishal), while Aaranya meets a wife-beating sadist named Prakash (Amzath Khan) during their respective job visits to Mangalore. To justify their later actions, Rohin puts Gautham and Aaranya's lives in stark contrast from the start. In Mangalore, their romance is revived, but before they go too far, they decide never to meet again and return to their lives. The past follows you around no matter how you look at it, and we understand that the name 'Theera Kaadhal' means more than just ‘undying love’ but also a boundless and insatiable devotion.

You feel an emotional alienation from the proceedings from the outset, which only grows. For starters, it's due to the phoniness of the scene staging and conversation scripting. Aaranya's abusive marriage life is similarly conveyed to Gautham through overt conversational exposition. Or how, just as they're falling in love, they're interrupted by calls from their respective lovers - wouldn't anything else, say, Gautam's knowledge of hurting Vandhana, add more complexities to what he's dealing with than this cliche?

The tiniest of circumstances, such as two like-minded persons saying the same thing at the same moment, do not translate well on screen and only serve to underline how little effort was put into the drama's writing. These main characters are never fully understood, and Rohin only adds depth to their qualities when the treatment and narrations suit his goals.

To ensure that his major characters are only the three leads, and to provide more excuses for how Aaranya acts thereafter, he paints Prakash as a one-dimensional megalomaniac narcissist who kicks and bashes his wife up in a terrifyingly explicit display. To begin, you might wonder why Aaranya never reports to the authorities. Most women are victims of domestic abuse and do not report it to authorities for a variety of reasons, including fear, societal stigma, and even something as basic as seeking the image of a former spouse. The only reason we're left to retrieve Aaranya is because she's all alone in this world, and leaving her spouse may take away any security she has. Second, is domestic violence required to generate this effect? Removing Prakash is a screenwriter's evasion, not just another sign of convenience.

The extremely convenient setup encourages you to expect a typical romance drama with three characters, but the film unexpectedly turns into a romantic thriller, and things soon unravel. Rohin has a problem conveying human greyness, as seen by the manner he writes important characters and creates events around them.

To make matters worse, the film doesn't even care to dot the i's and cross the t's to complete its emotional arcs, such as Vandhana's relationship with Gautham and the future of a pivotal character, in part because Rohin adds so much heft to cheap thriller tricks and suspense-building that the pulse on which everything is built is lost. This is also why each of the characters appears to be bits and pieces, sometimes borderline insane and psychotic, sometimes as robotic as people can be; in any case, we never see them as anything more than that or care enough to understand the key emotional judgments they constantly make. Viewing Theera Kaadhal may have been an even more painful experience if not for the three excellent performers and the soundtrack by Siddhu Kumar.

Theera Kadhal is a decent film in general, but it falls short of being a truly engaging and emotionally memorable love story.

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