Varane Avashyamund: A subtle, realistic romance that leaves you smiling.

(Now, I do not speak Malayalam, so I didn't understand some of the comedy in the movie.)

Feel-good movies always leave you wanting something more, but this one didn't. Probably because it's not completely a feel-good movie, but still. You get the point.

This movie started out by showing the lives of Nikki (Kalyani Priyadarshan), who's looking for an arranged marriage because she's "decent," and her mother Neena (Shobhana), a French teacher.

Being honest, I was kinda confused at the beginning, but it made sense to me as I kept going. And after I watched it a second time.

Then, Major Unnikrishnan (Suresh Gopi) and Bibeesh P. (Dulquer Salmaan) were introduced. Both of them were more for the funny side of the movie, which was nice. Major and Bibeesh were Nikki and Neena's neighbours.

After all these introductions, we get to see the love start to happen between Neena and Major. Their love was like a nice, modern romance that you would see in a typical rom-com or masala movie. It wasn't the "old-age romance" that you would expect, where they would simply feel shy when they look at one another.

Nikki and Bibeesh had most of their love story happen in the second half of the movie, and it just... happened. In the first half, Nikki was with Aby, but soon broke up with him due to family differences. Bibeesh was with his girlfriend, but they broke up also. Nikki, Bibeesh, and his brother were friends, and they spent a lot of time at each others' apartments.

And the movie ends with Nikki and Bibeesh going on their first DATE date, but getting caught by a police officer, who happens to be one of the marriage alliances that Nikki escaped from.

One thing that stood out to me in the movie was how nice they were to each other. They were so nice. Very very nice. And it was a casual kind of nice. When someone borrowed eggs from their neighbors, they returned the favor by giving them some prawn curry, which I thought was small, but really nice. But obviously that wouldn't be as thoughtful if it were to happen now because of corona, but still.