Some films ask big questions. Oru Naal Uravu asks a smaller, more uncomfortable one: what do you do with a connection that was never meant to last?
Harish Sridhar, a Chennai-based intellectual property lawyer turned filmmaker, has built his debut short film around that question, and the result is a 40-minute Tamil-English slice-of-life drama that has been quietly finding its audience since its digital release on May 16th. "I wanted to explore modern dating and the fleeting moments of vulnerability and companionship that we unexpectedly find," he says, and the film does precisely that, without sentimentality and without easy resolution.
The premise is deceptively light. Two working professionals meet on a failed blind date and spend a day navigating each other and themselves, their pasts surfacing in the gaps between conversation. The characters, notably, have no names. Harish was deliberate about that. "I wanted it to be highly relatable, that this could happen, or might be happening, to anyone," he explains. The leads are played by Krishna and Smruthi Mohankumar, and the film was shot largely across Anna Nagar, its unpolished pop-up eateries and easy pedestrian movement doing quiet work in grounding the story in a recognisably Chennai texture.
Harish came to filmmaking through theatre and that background shaped his approach to the camera in ways he is candid about. "The theatre hangover was still there," he admits, noting that some of his staging instincts were stage-trained ones. But it also gave him something rarer in short-form Tamil cinema: the patience for a long scene. "I didn't feel the need to cut and chop frantically to hold attention. I knew long, sustained sequences, similar to how you experience conversations on stage, can be done as long as the emotions could stick," he says. It is a mumblecore sensibility, a Western indie genre he felt was largely missing in local storytelling, at least in its focus on characters in their twenties navigating young adult awkwardness. "What I miss the most would be a focus on characters in their twenties, capturing the awkwardness of it all," Harish says, noting that elements of the genre exist in films like 96 but that there is still significant ground to cover.
The film was inspired by Norwegian Wood by The Beatles, specifically its quality of speaking about something timeless in the language of a particular moment. "It made me think whether modern dating has modern problems or just the same things that have plagued us forever," Harish says. That question runs underneath the whole film. He sees his own generation as one that "had made instant gratification a habit and looked for it in relationships too," and yet he resists the easy cynicism that framing might invite. Modern dating is both simpler and more complicated than it used to be, he argues. "It's easier because of online proximity, but what connection or vulnerability or love meant for previous generations was different. It was aspirational. Now it's more experimental."
The music, composed by Badhri Seshadri, carries that ambiguity carefully. The brief to both composer and lyricist Badri Janu Narayanan was built around a single, firm instruction. "Never use the word love," Harish says. "I wanted the album to focus on connection and chemistry between strangers." The album has three tracks, which is unusual for a short film, and the singer Subhashini features on Nil Irave, the track that has resonated most warmly with audiences. The title track, Oru Naal Uravo, was entirely Badhri's own addition, unrequested and, by Harish's own admission, now a firm favourite with his parents.
What Harish ultimately wants viewers to leave with is not catharsis or closure but something gentler. "Solace," he says. "Solace in the fact that many experience nights of such intense vulnerability and connection, only to find it missing the very next morning."
Email: shivani@newindianexpress.com
X: @ShivaniIllakiya
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