Kannathil Muthamittal (2002)

a peck on the cheek
no cure for child's deep longing
though she calls it home

I had been wanting to see Kannathil Muthamittal for quite some time. For some reason the dvd was never available on Netflix and not being able to pronounce the title, I gave up trying to find it at a local market.

Fast forward a year or so and this film is the reason I renewed my Netflix subscription. I was flipping through the pages of films available for instant viewing and saw "A Peck on the Cheek" buried in the foreign titles. It was NOT listed by it's actual title which probably explains why I couldn't find it.

First of all, Mani Ratnam is the best. His films offer a wonderful balance of beauty and substance. Secondly, there is just something very pleasant about Madhavan. I can't lay a finger on it but I enjoy watching him on screen.

Interestingly (or sadly) enough, before watching this film, I didn't know anything about civil unrest in Sri Lanka. I only knew the people there are very brown, many of them are very pretty and M.I.A's from there. My mention of it is not to imply that the film bothers to explain any of it, but in typical Ratnam style, it shows glimpses of people on all sides of the conflict. Still, the conflict merely plays background to the story of a little girl desperate to find out where she came from and why her birth mother left her behind.

I am such a sucker for adoption stories. This one was particularly challenging in that it made me think of the emotional process a child has to go through even when adopted by parents of the same ethnicity and language AND likewise, the emotional process the parents have to endure and the potential for being pushed away. Where the revelation of adoption might make one child cling to his or her adoptive parents all the more, another child feels the need to reconnect with their biological heritage and there's no way to predict or prepare for the outcome.

Enough rambling. If you haven't seen the film, watch it.
You'll thank me.