Review: In ‘Pyaar Prema Kalyanam’, a halfway modern challenge to traditional family values

Love is now progressive but have men kept pace, social media influencer Pavi asks her followers. The Netflix release Pyaar Prema Kalyanam has other rhetorical questions in store for viewers, such as the one posed by the hero, Elan, to his mother: am I still a child?

Elan, played by the Tamil film’s director Elan, is allegedly an adult. Elan chucks a lucrative job in Dubai because he misses his amma’s dosas. Back in Chennai, Elan submits to his strict father’s demand to get married – without seeing the bride.

She is the aforementioned Pavi (Saanve Megghna), who has been brought up by her parents (Elango Kumaravel and Radikaa Sarathkumar) to be independent. We don’t need to take a gender studies class or be a fan of 1980s family melodramas to know what that means.

After the unemployed Elan and the gainfully employed Pavi are married, she refuses to move into his home, demanding that he become a house husband instead. Elan warps into the male version of the housewife who cooks and cleans incessantly while his spouse puts the money on the table, much to the shock of his parents (MS Bhaskar and Geetha Kailasam).

Pyaar Prema Kalyanam is a spiritual sequel to Elan’s Pyaar Prema Kaadhal (2018). That film explored the...

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