3 Stars (out of 4)
Tu Yaa Main (“You or Me“) is more than just a creepy creature feature. It has quite a lot of to say about wealth inequality, class differences, and the commodification of the individual in the age of social media.
Yet director Bejoy Nambiar employs two truly disappointing uses of the flash-forward in this film. The technique is trendy, and maybe it’s even something he borrowed from the 2018 Thai film The Pool on which Tu Yaa Main is based. Either way, there’s no reason to use the technique the way he does.
The film opens with a woman and two men flirting in a lake somewhere in southern India. One of them is eaten by an unseen animal, letting the audience know what threat the main characters will eventually face. It’s a classic monster movie setup.
Inexplicably, the next scene is a flash-forward of the two main characters Maruti (Adarsh Gourav) and Avani (Shanaya Kapoor) — who haven’t been officially introduced but whom the audience will recognize from the movie poster and trailer — arguing while trapped in a very deep, empty swimming pool. They aren’t in any immediate danger, and nothing exciting happens. The title graphic floats into frame as Avani yells for help.
What is the point of this scene? It’s like Nambiar forgot that he already had an opening sequence — one that was more interesting than two people bickering. Was he worried that people would be confused when they didn’t immediately see Gourav and Kapoor? Then he could’ve started with a pool scene and cut the animal attack sequence. It makes no sense.
The main story gets a proper chronological start after that. Avani is a popular lifestyle influencer known as “Miss Vanity,” and Maruti is an up-and-coming rapper called “Aala Flowpara.” He gets in trouble with her security guards while filming a music video in front of her mansion, and she’s amused when he flirts with her in the middle of the scuffle.
They meet again at a concert, and he follows her (and her manager and other staff members) home from the event. She hops out of her SUV and spends the night riding around with him on his motorcycle.
Privately, the pair start dating despite the huge class divide that separates them, bonding over their complicated relationships with their parents (Maruti’s dad absconded, and Avani’s are dead). Being associated with Avani is good for Maruti’s career, but he genuinely likes her. Being with Maruti affords Avani a degree of freedom she doesn’t have as “Miss Vanity,” who is as much a business as it is a persona. Her manager’s shriek when Avani discloses that she ate carbs while out joyriding with Maruti is very funny.
Both characters have people who depend on them financially, but their relationships with their dependents are quite different. Maruti’s trying to provide stability and material comfort for his mother, sister, and her infant, all of whom share an apartment with him that’s smaller than Avani’s swimming pool. Avani’s dependents are her employees. The couple’s romantic relationship comes with huge questions about its effect on both of their future earning potentials, a fact they are happy to ignore — until they can’t.
Gourav and Kapoor are both wonderful at humanizing their characters and making them more than superficial stereotypes. They communicate so much with glances that it holds your attention. A killer soundtrack of tunes largely co-written and performed by Gourav enhances the experience. The track “Jee Liya” — which Gourav sings with Lothika — is terrific.
Around 45 minutes into the movie — well after the audience has become invested in the main couple and right after an emotional sequence in which Avani tells Maruti about her parents’ tragic deaths — the movie again flashes forward to the couple stuck in the empty pool. Maruti finds a way out through a drain, but they don’t escape. No monster, no excitement.
Why?
Did Nambiar think we’d forgotten how the movie opened? Did he think we missed the foreshadowing when Avani mentioned the possibility of dying in her own large swimming pool or the significance of the scene of her parents’ drowning? Is the flash-forward supposed to benefit people who walked into the theater 20 minutes late or were scrolling on their phone?
If it’s because of the second question, well, tough luck to those viewers. Show up on time and pay attention. If it’s because of the first question, it’s an insult. How movie-illiterate does Nambiar think we are?
The empty pool finally comes into play in the second half of the film. The couple fight about their future and are sent away by Avani’s people to figure things out. Maruti’s motorcycle breaks down en route to Goa, and they get stuck at a rundown hotel that’s closing for the season. The hotel has a 20-foot-deep swimming pool with no shallow end that’s used for scuba training. They accidentally wind up stuck in the drained pool, but they aren’t alone.
Tu Yaa Main‘s pivot from relationship drama to survival thriller is well-handled and quite fun. The creature effects are very good, and the story finds inventive ways to keep our heroes imperiled. It’s especially proficient at emphasizing the physical toll on the characters. When they fall while trying to climb out of the pool, you feel it when they land on the hard tiles.
The film is otherwise so well done that it makes the two in medias res scenes extra jarring. I don’t know if they come from Nambiar’s (or his producers’) lack of confidence in himself or his audience, but the scenes are confounding distractions.
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