Bachelor (2021 film)

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Bachelor is a 2021 India Tamil-language coming of age romance film written and directed by debutant Sathish Selvakumar. Produced by G.Dillibabu under the banner of Axess Film Factory, the film stars Divya Bharathi (In her Tamil debut) as the protagonist and G. V. Prakash Kumar as the antagonist respectively.

It was released on 3 December 2021.^[1]

Plot[]

Darling (G. V. Prakash Kumar) is a selfish and laid-back youngster. He shifts to Bangalore from Coimbatore in search of job after his mother along with his sister's family had left to Dubai. He stays in a small Bachelor's room with his brother's batchmates Arun, Shyam, Bhagya, Prem and few others initially. On the first night of his arrival itself, Darling gets drunk and urinates on Shyam's laptop which costs him an interview for an abroad job. The room is very small, cramped, old fashioned and they grow roosters in a cage like typical small town guys. Darling feels uncomfortable and cramped inside the small bachelor room and wants to shift to his childhood friend Nimmi's room. But Nimmi denies telling his room is even more small and uncomfortable. Bucks (Bagavathi Perumal) is a Senior Manager who is friendly with them and helps them with their expenses. Darling's roommates help him find a job in the IT firm they are working. The Bachelor boys along with Bucks spend their time happily roaming around, cooking biryani with the roosters they grow, drinking amidst their corporate jobs. One day, when Darling and Nimmi go to get beer for their roommates. While coming back to their room, they meet with an accident and Nimmi is severely injured by it. The roommates rush and admit him in hospital and treat. After he is discharged and brought back home, the roommates are shocked to see Darling's selfish activities by not giving a damn about the accident and eats the cooked biryani while his friend is crying aloud in pain.

The next day a mysterious girl enters the Bachelor room to see Nimmi. She is revealed to be Rumi who is in a live-in relationship with Nimmi. Darling is perplexed seeing his close friend hiding this fact from him. Darling gets furious, and drinks alcohol mixed with coconut and goes to Nimmi's room. He is shocked to see the flat to be a very posh apartment and is furious on Nimmi about lying to him earlier. He gets a cultural shock when he sees boys and girls drinking together casually. On that particular night, he meets Subba "Subbu" Lakshmi (Divya Bharathi), a roommate of Nimmi and Rumi. She arrives back after an outstation trip. Darling falls in love and lust on Subbu's beauty, after seeing her amidst rain and feels butterflies in his stomach. He decides to stay in their room itself and asks Nimmi to request Subbu about it. Subbu agrees to it but with few conditions.

After few days, Nimmi and Rumi leave to Boston for onsite job. Now Darling and Subbu stay together. Darling is filled with lust on seeing Subbu and tries certain gimmicks to get her attention, but Subbu is not responsive to it. Darling then dances for a traditional song in their office's festival day, and this captures Subbu's attention, and she eventually asks Darling if he is in love with her. Darling is unsure and doesn't say a yes. So Subbu tells him that guys from small towns romanticise such relationships and be careful with it. After few days together, Subbu falls sick and is bed ridden. Now Darling pampers her so much and takes care of her in a loveable manner which makes Subbu fall for him. Eventually they both kiss and get physical, and they get into a romantic live in relationship. Six months passes by, and they are very intimate with each other physically and they often have sex. Darling also uses Subbu's money for his own expenses without her knowledge, but Subbu doesn't mind. One day while they have sex in car, Darling reveals that he has audio recordings of their phone sex conversation. Subbu gets angry and asks him to delete it. Inspite of all this, Darling doesn't reveal about Subbu to his friends or his family. One day Darling is about to leave to his hometown in Coimbatore along with his friends. While leaving Darling just goes off with a bye, but Subbu who is filled with love innocently asks him for a hug. But Darling hugs her back mechanically, without any emotion.

Darling and his friends arrive in Coimbatore and they meet Darling's family. Darling's mother Dhanam and elder sister Brinda requests him to come along with them to Dubai and settle there. But Darling doesn't answer or accept their request. While Darling is with his entire family and relatives in a function, he keeps getting frequent calls from Subbu. He doesn't attend initially, but attends after a point and gets the shock of his life. Subbu reveals that she is pregnant. Darling rushes back to Bangalore and takes Subbu to the hospital. In the scanner, it is revealed Subbu is carrying twin babies. Subbu is so emotional, and wants to be a mom and live a happy life with Darling. But Darling is perplexed by the fact, and is scared to even think about his conservative family and friends would react to it. He asks Subbu to go for an abortion, for which Subbu denies. They get into a verbal argument in the hospital and start shouting at each other. Darling tells he didn't cheat her in the name of love, for which Subbu gets offended and cries in the hospital. Darling feels his life is going to be messed up.

After the hospital incident, things fallout between Subbu and Darling. To sort this, Darling with his friends friends along with Bucks and Subbu with her friends, Helen and Muba meet in a cafe to settle this in an amicable manner. Bucks tries to speak on behalf of Darling, that live-in relationship is without commitments and requests for abortion. But Helen and Muba speak against it and an argument arises. Things get out of hand, when Darling picks a fight with Subbu's friend, Muba and forcibly pushes Subbu inside the car and locks her up, and demands her to fix an appointment for abortion. Darling along with Arun and Bhagya take Subbu to the hospital again, but much to their shock she escapes from there. Darling, Arun and Bhagya search for her everywhere in the city, and in Subbu's friend houses too. While searching, Darling gets a call from someone in Subbu's side but Darling shouts and swears at him with bad words and threatens him that he would leak all the audio recordings of their phone sex conversations. They are not able to find her and are scared like hell, about what she did to herself. After few days, Darling, Bucks and other friends are sitting in high tension in a ground thinking about what happened to Subbu.

Suddenly, Bucks gets a call and he asks Darling to speak. Darling picks up the call in fear, but the caller is revealed to be Lanthus (Munishkanth), Darling's uncle and his mother's brother. He informs him that Subbu has escaped from Bangalore with the help of Helen to her sister's house in Chennai. He also reveals that Subbu's brother in law is a ruthless criminal lawyer named Rudran. Rudran is revealed to be a short tempered, arrogant lawyer, and he was the one who had called previously called Darling. He gets very furious after Darling swears at him and threatens him about the audio recordings. He decides to cook up a story that Darling and Subbu got married already, and Darling's family had abused Subbu in the name of dowry. He also files a Domestic Violence case on Darling. The police arrests Darling's entire family in their hometown especially Darling's mother, sister and brother are remanded and produced in the court. In court, Darling's mother is furious and cries to Lanthus about the fact that her son has done such a crime to a girl and brought disgrace to their family. Rudran cooks up the story even more by making Subbu come in a wheelchair to the court. Darling's mother, sister and brother are produced in front of the judge. Manoj, Darling's lawyer argues that the case is fake, and Darling and Subbu were just friends and nothing more than that. Rudran argues back and produces the evidence of the phone sex conversation between Subbu and Darling to the judge. The judge hears it concludes that, they don't seem to be just friends and demands Manoj to produce Darling in the court. Lanthus calls up Darling and scolds him for the phone sex conversations and demands him to come immediately to Chennai.

Hearing about this Darling gets furious, and drives down to Chennai and tries to directly meet Subbu in her house. He forcibly enter their house, and shouts at Subbu to come out and requests to sort it out within themselves. Subbu refuses to meet him and doesn't come out. Now Darling is produced in the court, and Manoj requests the judge to grand bail for them. Rudran tells that he doesn't have any objection about the bail, but reveals they might leave to Dubai. So Rudran requests the judge to make them sign in local police station till they prove they are no guilty in this case. The judge grants bail but orders them not to leave Chennai until the case is over.

Darling's family goes through severe hardships as they have to sign in police station daily and are also ashamed by the activities of Darling. Brinda scolds Darling severely, and blames he is the reason for the family suffering this much. Darling and his friends try to sort out with Rudran, but all goes in vain. In the next hearing, Manoj argues that these marriage certificates are fake and cannot be believed. After this, Rudran drops his trump card by revealing that Subbu is pregnant and produces the pregnancy certificates. Manoj and Lanthus are shocked by this fact, as they were unaware about this. They are furious are Darling's friends for not revealing about it, and tells they cannot escape from this and Darling has no way out to go. But the friends plead him to find a way to save Darling's family.

Now Manoj suggests an idea to win the case by portraying Darling as impotent therefore making it impossible for him to father the child. Although initially resistant Darling agrees to it thinking about his family. Subbu is furious seeing Darling accepting that he is impotent in front of everyone in the court. The Judge orders them to prove it and undergo a potency test in a government authorised hospital. Darling's friends try their best to forge and bribe many doctors, but everything is futile.

Finally, they get to know about a person in Pondicherry who can temporarily make him "impotent". Now Darling, Lanthus, Bucks and other friends travel to Pondicherry and meet The Father (Mysskin)), a shady doctor who tells he can give temporary impotency. Darling is anxious at the last moment and refuses to undergo in fear. But his friends, Lanthus and Bucks convince him to take it up and consider their family's situation. The treatment is performed, and Darling is proved to be impotent in the government certified clinic. After getting the certificate, Darling and friends sit in a street subway to have tea in the night. Now, Nimmi returns back from Boston and comes to meet Darling. Darling is unable to face Nimmi in guilt. Nimmi starts scolding Darling for his pathetic activities of cheating Subbu in the name of love and asks if he would be fine if someone did the same to his sister, Brinda. Darling gets triggered and they get into a scuffle before the cops intervene. The cops arrest Nimmi and take him. But before leaving, Nimmi tells Darling that the reason Subbu didn't abort the baby was that she loved him so much that she wanted to properly commit and form more than just a physical relationship. This causes a change of heart in Darling which he keeps to himself, and he feels guilty.

The next day in court, Darling is eagerly waiting for Subbu to arrive and she finally arrives but she doesn't a give a damn about Darling. The court proceedings start, while Darling looks at Subbu thinking about their happy memories and gives a yearning look at Subbu. Meanwhile, Manoj produces the impotency certificate to the judge. Seeing this Subbu is shocked to the core, and looks at Darling in a pathetic manner like he is standing here without saying a word after all that happened between them. She is disgusted by the fact that he had denied responsibility for his own babies. Rudran demands for a DNA test, but Subbu intervenes. She takes vapouse for the case and walks off from the court. Darling startled by Subbu's actions, runs behind her. On his way, his mother, sister and friends look furiously at him for all the trouble they underwent because of him. Darling goes and stands before Subbu and tries to speak to her. Darling finally confesses his love to Subbu. Subbu in return, tells him love is a very precious thing and he is not worth it and leaves off. Darling is completely stunned by her answer, and Subbu walks off recollecting all the memories with him. She finally gets over it and shows her middle finger to Darling. Darling looks on with guilt and remorse, and stands ashamed about his own actions.

Cast[]

Production[]

In September 2019, G. V. Prakash was cast in the film.^[3] On 13 September 2019, first look of the film along with cast line up was revealed.^[4] Filming was wrapped up in October 2020.^[5] Though teaser was released on 13 February 2021, but anticipated release was delayed due to COVID-19 aftermath.^[6]

Music[]

The songs were composed by G. V. Prakash Kumar, Dhibu Ninan Thomas, Siddhu Kumar and A. H. Kaashif, while Siddhu Kumar did the complete background score. The 'Life of bachelor' track may be inspired from song 'Angamaly' from malayalam movie Angamaly Diaries.

Reception[]

M Suganth of the Times of India gave 3 stars out of 5 and wrote that the film "is an often fascinating, indulgent peek into the life of a deeply flawed character." Praising performance of GV Prakash Kumar Suganth opined, "[and] he does a pretty good job in capturing the obnoxiousness of this character." Criticising the writing and editing Suganth stated, "Both the writing and the editing give the feeling of requiring tighter focus." Appreciating the handheld shots from Theni cinematographer, the reviewer said, "[relying on handheld shots] to narrate this tale makes us feel like we are in the midst of these characters and being part of their lives." In conclusion Suganth said, that in the ending the director didn't present the emotional effect of fallout on protagonists but only showed how it effected the lives of those around them, that's why the ending felt "less impactful despite being a progressive one."^[7]

Accolades[]

Notes[]

References[]

External links[]

• Bachelor at IMDb