Ner Ethir

Kathir ( Parthi) is a temperamental young man who realizes that his lover and fiance Isha (Vidya) is having an affair. He follows her to a hotel, books a room opposite hers to observe her, catch her in the act and eventually murder her. He calls up his friend Karthi ( Richard) and informs him of his plan. Interestingly, it is Karthi who is holed up in Isha's room. Will Kathir discover the truth? What will be the fate of the other two if that happens? Every now and then, in Tamil cinema, we get two films having the same storyline — the year 1999 saw Jodi and Poovellam Kettuppar, which took off from the premise of Kadhalukku Mariyadhai; in 2003, we had Jay Jay and Enakku 20 Unakku 18, which were based on Serendipity; more recently, we had 6 Melugu Vathigal and Paraseega Mannan, which revolved around child trafficking. And, now, we have Ner Ethir, which closely resembles another recent film Unnodu Oru Naal, directed by Durai Karthikeyan, which released in September 2013. But, troublingly, barring the absence of a back story in this one, both the films are too similar (going down to even some of the frames) that we can safely assume that the real inspiration lies somewhere else. The one deviation is that while it was an extra-marital affair in the earlier film, here, Jayapradeep makes it a case of cheating — two of the characters are in a relationship but are yet to get married. And this significantly lowers the emotional stakes. You can sympathize with a man who feels betrayed by his wife, but here, the unmarried Kathir's reaction seems too extreme; you wonder if he should behave in a more sensible manner — break off his relationship with Vidya and look for love elsewhere. Moreover, Vidya's character is appalling — she informs Karthi, (in bed, no less!) that she has started falling in love with Kathir and is planning to be faithful to him from the next day, but that night, she wants to sleep with Karthi as she cannot forget him. The performances and the filmmaking are so flat that you never really invest in these characters. The drawn-out nature of the scenes and the irritating comedy track only make things worse.