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| Ettekal Second |
Story: The film is a love-story between two people who meet unexpectedly and later watch their chance meeting evolve into a relationship.
As a film that comes with an interesting title, Ettekal Second never actually goes beyond the science that inspired the title. According to scientists, if a man maintains an eye-contact with a woman for a period of 8.25 seconds, he finds her so attractive that he falls head over heels in love with her.
Working around this fact, Ettekal second is a monotonous arrangement of sequences that have marked love-stories for ages. Boy meets girl, her rudeness hurts him first and her sweetness melts him later. They also find themselves on the familiar opposite ends, the rich and the poor.
Song sequences are added adequately to give the narrative more sense, one of the songs even shot completely underwater. It's a beautifully shot sequence though, perhaps one of the rare moments where the film holds interest. There is an attempt to bring in a few good moments, l
ike the ruthless money-lender who is transformed into a pure soul after a man who owes him money donates blood for his son when everyone else turns him down.
However none of the scenes stand out simply because they appear squeezed in solely for the purpose of creating tenderness in a film built with cliches. Padmasurya shows flashes of promises, never overstraining himself and adding a touch of ease to the character of a lover boy. The curiosity around the title is sustained for a prolonged period and is broken almost abruptly.