Review: Ormayundo Ee Mukham has no substance

Ormayundo Ee Mukham is fluffy and breezy but disappointing, says Paresh C Palicha.

There are two things that make a love story work: one is the intensity of emotions experienced by the lovers for each other and the other is the obstacles they have to overcome to unite in the end.

In director Anvar Sadik’s first film Ormayundo Ee Mukham the lead characters are very interesting as individuals but there is not much chemistry between them.

One thing has to be made clear and that is that Ormayundo Ee Mukham is not a spoof on Suresh Gopi's punchline used in Commissioner (1994) nor is it used even casually in any conversation in the entire movie.

Nithya (Namitha Pramod) is a sand animation artist. She has a peculiar problem - she can retain memories only of that day. She has no recollection of what happened the day before.

This condition developed after she met with a freaky car accident. Curiously, her memory from before the accident is intact.

She keeps a notebook to jot down important events of the day and refers to the notebook first thing the next morning.

She has a younger sister Nithu (Sou Sadanandan), who helps her in this task.

Gautham (Vineeth Sreenivasan) has done his MBA from London and is struggling to get a foothold in the family-owned Ayurvedic pharmaceutical company. He has a widowed mother (Rohini).

Gautham makes a mess of every task given to him because he is absent minded. His mother thinks that Gautham's problem can be resolved if he settles down with her niece who has also done an MBA and is working in Benguluru.

Gautham does not like his mother’s choice and to stop his mother from going forward with her plans, he says he is involved with another girl and is going out on a date with her the next day.

This idea of lying was suggested to him by his grandmother (Lakshmi). His mother sends his best friend Apoorva (Aju Varghese), who is also her employee, to spy on her son.

As you can guess, Nithya and Gautham meet and spend the day together as if they are on a date just to fool Apoorva.

Sparks fly between them and by the end of the day we know that they are made for each other.

But, the next day Nithya forgets all about it, and it is up to Gautham to prove that they fell in love with each other and discovered that they are soul mates.

Can real soul mates surmount obstacles like memory loss or forgetfulness?

The director has listed numerous films made on similar themes, though he leaves out the cult classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), which seems to be a major influence behind this film.

The characterisation of Nithya as a sand animation artist figuratively depicts her mental state where images appear and vanish within a few minutes.

She is seen as a brave heart ready to take on anything that life throws at her, but is vulnerable in the final section of the film.

Vineeth Sreenivasan gives an adequate performance in the initial stages where he has to be funny. But he is out of place when he has to be intense, in the later stages of the film.

Ormayundo Ee Mukham is fluffy and breezy but disappointing.

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