Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapoor don’t burn the screen with passion but there’s a pleasant sense to their togetherness, feels Sukanya Verma.

Romance prompts labels and rules.

There’s always a ‘type’ to describe both the individuals in a couple, the arrangement they agree upon and the guidelines they hope to set and follow for the sake of perfection or peace.

But the heart is no slave to system and gives precedence to impulse above anything else. 

Filmmaker Mani Ratnam is the master of whimsy and impetuous love, where the reeling state of two besotted protagonists is the only high and heart his storytelling needs. One of its most dazzling examples in recent time is O Kadhal Kanmani, which is about a young pair, at the threshold of pursuing their careers in two different continents, opting to live-in. 

Perhaps it’s only a case of commitment blues or not wanting to get entangled in the snags of serious relationships. What comes across though, and also the reason why it works so well, is it feels like a story of connection, not arrangement, where the process of falling in love surpasses the condition it’s founded on. 

Ratnam’s script is fail-safe only elevated to giddy levels of spunk and sentimentality by his sublime collaborator A R Rahman and a flawless cast led by two extremely riveting actors --Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen. 

With Ratnam and Rahman holding fort, there’s little Shaad Ali can get wrong in his faithful Hindi remake titled Ok Jaanu. Jaanu doesn’t sound nearly as sweet as Kanmani but when belted out of Rahman -- jaanu, joker -- it ceases to matter. 

Except Ok Jaanu cannot shrug off the identity of a remake.

It’s like two people who’ve watched the original consciously recreating it for an audience unfamiliar to the original.

Shaad Ali, who previously remade Ratnam’s Alai Payuthey as Saathiya, sticks to the script but leaves out some finer details, which are crucial to the essence of Ratnam’s screenplay. Like two Tamilians bonding in a home away from home scenario or their somewhat touristy vision of Mumbai, a local would rarely share. 

In Ok Jaanu too, both Adi and Tara aren’t originally from Mumbai yet come across as unrealistically indigenous. 

Rather every single frame of this glossed-up version, captured through Ravi K Chandran’s lens and painted in hues of orange, maroon and sunshine, is a nod to the virtues of refined production design. Rains and landmarks solely exist to provide all the drama and opulence the script rigidly refrains from.