Miss You review: Siddharth-Ashika rom-com is a dated take on modern relationships

During a big, emotional reveal in N Rajasekar’s Miss You, where a man learns about a part of his life he was forcibly kept from, we hear his friend crack an incorrigible wife joke. And obviously enough, mimicking the effect of the stock sitcom laugh track, the joke changes the film's mood from “emo” to “amusing.” This moment pretty much sums up the core of Miss You, a rom-com that is as reductive and forgettable as its title.

At a time of rom-com drought in Tamil cinema, a breezy romantic comedy led by Siddharth almost seems like a no-brainer. Yet Miss You is the sort of film that, despite being centred around a modern relationship and being well-performed, applies the mechanics of a deeply dated and patriarchal viewpoint that was once the hallmark of the genre, i.e., the curious case of the woman and her lack of agency. Miss You is about one such love story between Vasu (Siddharth) and Subbulakshmi (Ashika Rangathan), whose worlds are worlds apart. Or are they?

Vasu, a righteous man — a lowkey Chitra Aravindan if you will — who is gradually recovering from a head injury, gets by on a partially functioning memory. He falls for Subbulakshmi after seeing her taking part in a protest against the hijab ban in Bangalore. But just when you think you’re learning a little more about the woman in the romance, Vasu proposes marriage to her by pulling out the corniest, most regressive pick-up lines from the playbook. “You are not like other women. You are bold and independent,” he declares. 

Miss You is unfortunately one of those films where even a small character detail of a female lead still caters to what the man wants. Everything we know about Subbu — like her love for activism and take on marriage — is perfunctory. Vasu’s needs, on the other hand, are something that the film solely revolves around. At every small inconvenience, his motley group of dude-bro friends assemble to give life advice spiked with some heavily offensive stereotypes about women and marriage.

A big chunk of the film largely also centres on Vasu slowly piecing together vital information about his past — this includes a will-they-won’t-they romance that he remembers nothing about. But any interest that this premise suggests is immediately offset by a deluge of unnecessary dance numbers and rants about inadequate wives. The problem with Miss You is how it perceives gender roles in romantic relationships. In its quest to be “modern,” it makes Vasu the type of man who calls out men’s weird fetish for the “loosu ponnu” trope and the type of man who likes “bold and independent” women. But he does all of this by berating someone for not being a “fearless 21st-century woman”. 

A man teaching a woman the nuances of being a freethinking woman is not as romantic as the film spells it out to be. 

Miss You does have some nice moments when it’s not too busy trying to peddle the “feminist modern man” narrative. Karunakaran plays a kind friend who often plays Vasu’s voice of reason, leading to some pleasant scenes about the beauty of unlikely friendships. We also get a nice stretch involving a strong cup of Coorgi coffee changing the course of someone’s life. But these moments hardly last, and the film immediately moves on to Vasu and his god complex. 

At one point in the film, almost close to the climax, we learn in an off-handed joke that one of Vasu’s friends, a woman, is actually a doctor. This detail might serve no purpose to the film, but such is the state of almost every character in Miss You — anyone who isn’t Vasu misses the cut in this rom-com.

If there’s anything Sruthi loves more than watching films, it’s writing about it. Sruthi Ganapathy Raman’s words can also be read in Film Companion, Scroll.in, and The Times of India.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.