Love Birds

<p>After accidentally meeting, Mridula ( ) and Arun ( ) fall in love. The young couple both come from affluent families, and so, to test whether they will be suited for a long-term relationship, they both decide to live together. However, a few months into their relationship, Arun and Mridula get in an accident and Arun dies. A devastated Mridula is unable to get over his absence, and before long starts seeing Arun in strange visions everywhere she goes. Her family eventually decide that relocating to another country might help Mridula move on, and so they send her to the UK. Once she arrives there, she meets Mano ( ), a young man attracted to her. She knows that her parents expect her to fall for Mano. But as she can’t move on, she runs away. She meets David who looks exactly like Arun. She follows him and finds out where he lives and works. Whenever she tries to talk to him, he denies his relationship with her and says he doesn’t know her. However, she later finds out that her father had Arun sent away as he had helped with Arun’s sister’s marriage and had threatened to let it all go downhill for her. Arun moves to the UK in hopes that he can forget about Mridula but he can’t and when he meets her, he realises this. When Mridula’s father finds out Arun is still alive, he tries to kill him. However, he realises his mistake and lets the lovebirds reunite. was signed to work on the film after working in ‘s 1994 hit , and his pair from that film, , was also signed on. British Indian musician was also signed on to sing and dance for a music video in the film. The film was predominantly shot across London, with scenes also canned at and at a . The producers had earlier location scouted in the city and took music director, along to get a feel of the city. The soundtrack was composed by A. R. Rahman, with lyrics by for the original Tamil version, by for the Telugu version and by and for the Hindi version. The song “Malargaley” is set to the . All lyrics are written by Vairamuthu. All lyrics are written by Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry. The film opened in January 1996. The film opened days earlier in Malaysia than India and was shown across 27 theatres in the country, a figure only usually exceeded for Tamil films starring , and this mirrors the large release the film received. K. Vijiyan of gave a positive review saying, “This movie seems made for courting couples, especially those who are facing problems with disapproving parents” and added that “strong dialogue makes the film rise slight above the ordinary”. was more critical, calling it yet another blowback for Prabhu Deva. wrote “To bank on the team of Prabhu Deva and Nagma to deliver the goods without a powerful story to back their effort has cost Pyramid Films International, the makers of , dearly despite shooting most part of the second half in England. Experienced director P. Vasu has written the story, dialogue, screenplay and somehow he is not able to infuse his usual sentiment oriented touches because the scope is very minimal in the plot” but praised Rahman’s music and Sekar’s cinematography. became an average grosser at the box office but was a little better than Prabhu Deva’s next, . The actor thus had to go through a slump in his film career.</p>