Taramani

Story:

Taramani is a 2017 Indian Tamil-language drama film written and directed by Ram. He co-produced the film with J. Satish Kumar under his production company Catamaran Productions. The film stars Andrea Jeremiah, Vasanth Ravi and Adrian Knight Jesly, with Anjali appearing in a cameo. The venture began production in August 2013 and was released after several delays on 11 August 2017. The film was received with positive reviews and it was a sleeper hit in the box office. Eyes Wide Shut, Y tu mamá también and Knife in the Water were the Inspiration of this film . For his performance as a lead actor in this debut film, Vasanth Ravi received The Best Debut Actor at the 10th Vijay Awards and in the Jio 65th South Filmfare Awards in 2018.

Plot

Althea Johnson is a young, Anglo Indian single mother working for the corporate sector in Chennai. One rainy evening, she takes shelter under an abandoned bus stop alongside a rugged young man, Prabhunath. Although they appear to be suspicious of each other, they both eventually start talking and become friends.

Prabhu reveals to Althea how he worked at a call centre and hated his job. The only good thing about his workplace is it was located right opposite to his girlfriend, Sowmya’s IT office. Sowmya was a highly educated but conservative, emotional young woman. When Sowmya needed money to get her visa to work in the States, Prabhu stole money from a sleeping stranger on the train and gave it to her. However, she married another man there, leaving Prabhu heartbroken. When he learnt that the man he stole from, died of a heart attack, Prabhu started to blame himself and became depressed. He almost committed suicide at the Taramani railway station, but is saved by a railway policeman, who later became his good friend.

Later on, Althea introduces Prabhu to her son, Adrian and her mother. Her mother disapproves of Althea’s friendship with Prabhu and this forces Althea leave the house. Being homeless, she is forced to spend the night at the railway station. Althea explains that she caught her husband, Jacob having an affair with a man. Understanding that he can never love her as a woman due to his sexuality, she separates from her husband unaware that she was pregnant. Althea along with her son Adrian spends lot of time together. One day Adrian asks Althea if he can call Prabhu his father. They eventually confess their feelings for each other and move in together.

Prabhu becomes possessive and overprotective, eventually suspecting Althea of having an affair with her boss. Things take a turn for the worse when Prabhu reads a crude text message from her boss. The argument leads to a break-up. Later, Prabhu visits Sowmya, who is back for a holiday. She gives him a box of chocolates as a gift but he rejects it. While her husband is out, he forces her to capture intimate photos with her, to blackmail for money. However, the chocolate box already had money more than he stole for her. Ashamed at how much he had changed, Prabhu leaves Sowmya’s hotel room.
Meanwhile, Althea meets her boss who makes sexist remarks about her. She politely ignores them and takes selfies of them together supposedly as a truce and uploads the photos in the social media. Fearing that his wife and daughter will see them, he begs her to delete the photos. Using this, Althea successfully blackmails him into applying for his transfer. Unaware of this, Prabhu berates her for having an affair with her boss having seen the photos online.

With a broken heart for the second time, Prabhu decides to embrace the dark side. He flirts anonymously with lonely married women via phone and records them. Later he blackmails them for money. One of the women turns out to be a friend of the city’s assistant police commissioner. While tapping Prabhu’s phone, the policeman learns that one of the women he is in contact is his own wife. The policeman rushes home and beats up both Prabhu and his own wife. Seeing the policeman abuse his wife Prabhu is reminded of himself and how he treated Althea.

With the money that he received from Sowmya, Prabhu visits the family of the man from whom he stole and repays the money. The widow tells him that the postmortem revealed that her husband died hours before Prabhu stole the money and forgives him. Prabhu learns his lesson and decides to start life afresh.
Prabhu returns to Althea and asks her for her forgiveness. She forgives him but asks him to leave the city since she does not want to complicate her son Adrian’s life. After multiple apologies spanning over a few days, she eventually accepts his love and they live happily ever after.