At the beginning of the film, when the couple accidentally meet on the streets of Japan, they reunite as if they have always been in love and have missed each other terribly. Right before that, the girl, who sees the guy first, has a kind-of-an-anxiety attack, which makes us believe that the lady was in a toxic relationship with the guy. But surprise, surprise… She was the one who had hit him on the head with a flower pot and run away from him. The reason? He was apologising to her for something he had said and pleading with her not to leave him.
You clearly cannot call this a love story. Indian cinema has this habit of not calling toxicity what it is. Instead, it presents it as an intense love story. Even in this film, the effort was to show how much they love each other and how things started going haywire only when financial stress began mounting. But no matter how many different labels they put on it, this story was toxic, and the woman here was toxic, not the man. When you look at your partner’s deepest wounds and start toying with them just to break them down mentally and emotionally, you are toxic, irrespective of your gender.
Toh Ti Aani Fuji, as a movie, is two hours of torture. It becomes unbearable after a while and has nothing to offer the audience. And seriously, Lalit Prabhakar should start exploring better roles now. Every character of his feels like a man-child, and it’s doing his career no good. Julun Yeti Reshimgathi established him as an actor and as the complete package we look for in a male lead. Now, all his roles feel like ‘convenience roles’, where friends from the industry come together, pick a safe script, and play it safe. Even good, interesting, and out-of-the-box stories are not being given the attention they deserve. And I am not talking only about Lalit Prabhakar here. The entire industry seems to be doing the same thing at this point. There are only a handful of names making films and OTT content these days, and they have simply stopped experimenting or putting effort into what they create. Toh Ti Aani Fuji is one of the best examples of this.
I truly had high hopes for this movie, and it had been on my list for a long time. But it was a waste of time, and I am disappointed to see Marathi filmmakers making such films, because I always thought they knew better.
Language: Marathi and Hindi
Where to Watch? SonyLiv
