Love Insurance Kompany review: Vignesh Shivan’s rom-com is high on feeling, low on thought

What makes Vignesh Shivan an interesting filmmaker is his relentless pursuit of packaging what an irreverent Gen Z would call boomerish as an ultra-modern ‘sheesh’… something even an unaware Gen Beta would lap up as a perfectly in-vogue emotion. Poda Poda is about a modern dancer whose husband eventually convinces her that family rearing matters more than her dream of winning dance competitions. Naanum Rowdy Dhaan was a cool story of a pure-hearted gentleman, now called out for being a stalker. Kaathuvaakula Rendu Kaadhal is about a polyamorous hero whose love for both heroines is so pure he doesn’t consummate the relationship with either. With Love Insurance KompanyVignesh Shivan has taken this righteous hero into a future where love has been utterly commodified — and it is up to him to teach his lover, and the world, what true love is.

The world of 2040

Suryian (SJ Suryah) is a multi-billionaire tech guru whose dating app has taken over the dating scene of a developed India in 2040. LIK app helps lovers insure their relationships. Upon a break-up, the app, which constantly monitors its users, reveals who has been loyal, and the guilty party pays up. Its success even convinces the law to look the other way on privacy. This world also has humans so addicted to their phones they are dependent on them for sustenance, which is, frankly, the present dressed up as the future. Crimes get you banished to a tech-free exile colony run by the hero’s father, aptly played by Seeman, a filmmaker-turned-politician and proponent of agrarian society.

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Vibe Vassey (Pradeep Ranganathan), his son, grows up without a phone but defies him by lending his voice to LIK. When Vassey bumps into Dheema (Krithi Shetty), he instantly falls in love, literal heart attack included, for a girl he knows nothing about. Dheema is an online influencer raised by an unavailable influencer mom who trusts tech far more than she trusts people. When LIK declares Vassey no match for Dheema, he has to fight the whole world to prove that love is bigger than an algorithm.

What works

Love Insurance Kompany is an engaging film with many uproariously funny moments, the Halloween party sequence, where Vassey resorts to some delightfully bloody measures to impress Dheema, being a standout. The world looks vibrant too. An ultra-developed Amma Unavagam, a Kamal Haasan University, and such nice touches make this future India genuinely interesting. US citizens are now selling hi-tech umbrellas on our streets–Vignesh Shivan’s optimism is overbearing here, given the real-time depreciation of the rupee. SJ Suryah shoulders the film with his trademark energy. His performance, though increasingly familiar, remains enjoyable. An Anirudh Ravichander-voiced robot called Bro, a humanoid girlfriend, and a cast of humans whose names he never quite remembers, deployed as upgrades to keep his act fresh. Yet there is still a we’ve-seen-this-before quality to his characterisation, not helped by a flashback that feels very much like an afterthought.

Where it slips

All these quirks, along with a tightly written script, make Love Insurance Kompany an engaging watch. But a sense of shallowness creeps in once the credits roll. The moment a film attempts to define love, it forfeits its exemption from scrutiny.

In fighting to save love from becoming a mere algorithm, Love Insurance Kompany ends up offering a definition just as reductive. There is a scene where Suryan tries to seduce Vassey with a European model, hoping to make him abandon his pursuit of Dheema. Vassey shoos her away despite the urge, meant to be revealing of his character. But if you stop to ask what made him fall for Dheema in the first place, it becomes a contradiction.

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The romantic heroes of Vignesh Shivan, across every film, are each absolutely convinced that they alone are capable of caring for their respective heroines. Vassey even says it out loud, that no one else can care for Dheema Puppyma the way he can. Push any of them for a rational explanation and you will hit a wall of earnest, irrational conviction that love is a matter of the heart alone. There is some truth in that… love seldom comes with reasons. But treating it as magical and supernatural is where the argument slips. Love Insurance Kompany places love on a sacred plane, halos it, and in doing so drains it of complexity. Such a definition inevitably relegates lust to the bottom of a moral hierarchy, attaching to it a faint tinge of the unclean.

Love Insurance Kompany is, at its core, a well-packaged entertainer… bright, funny, and propelled by committed performances. But for a film that takes on the audacious task of defending love against the cold logic of algorithms, it is undone by its own romanticism. The LIK app reduces love to data; the film reduces it to myth. Neither quite gets it right.