Tere Ishq Mein: Story, Performances & Emotional Impact

November 28, 2025 felt like a small festival in the multiplex I visited: bouquets at the ticket counter, couples sharing popcorn, and a buzz that wasn’t just about a new release but about a reunion of sorts a director known for tender emotional fractures returning to the terrain of unguarded obsession, and a star whose range has stretched from the rustic to the sublimely restrained. Tere Ishq Mein opens like a slow-burning confession, and it doesn’t apologize for the ache it intends to leave behind.

Where the story begins

Aanand L. Rai’s new film places us inside the messy orbit of Shankar and Mukti names that carry the faint echo of his earlier work but this is no simple retread. The film, led by Dhanush and Kriti Sanon, sketches a love that’s less a tidy romance than a slow erosion of boundaries: between devotion and possession, hope and denial. The screenplay, co-written by Himanshu Sharma and collaborators, chooses ellipses over exposition; it gives us scenes that linger in the mouth like an aftertaste rather than handing out clear-headed explanations.

Performance at the center

Dhanush carries the film’s emotional gravity. He’s not content to play safe; moments of silence around him say as much as his dialogue. There’s an unsettling steadiness to his gaze in several key sequences a quiet intensity that can tilt into menace or tenderness depending on a single camera tilt. Kriti Sanon, opposite him, brings an earthy clarity to Mukti. She’s less a foil and more a fully realized interior world, someone who insists on autonomy even as the plot coils tighter around her. The chemistry is volatile and fragile at once, and the film lets you feel the weight of both.

Music and sound: a weather system

When A. R. Rahman composes, music rarely exists as mere adornment. Here, it acts like weather: shifting the temperature of scenes, bringing storms into otherwise placid frames, and sometimes simply offering a single, heartbreaking melody that follows a character down a corridor and refuses to leave. Songs released ahead of the film have already found an audience online, their strings and breaths seeding conversations about the film’s mood. At times, the score lifts the film toward something intimate and sacred; at others, it underlines the claustrophobia within the central relationship.

Visual palette and direction

Visually, the film favors close quarters and long takes, inviting viewers to sit with discomfort rather than look away. Cinematography by Vishal Sinha keeps faces close, catching micro-movements that would be swallowed in wider framing. The director stages domestic spaces not as safe havens but as battlegrounds where gestures and small kindnesses are traded like currency. The film’s aesthetic feels deliberate: a blend of sun-faded tones and sudden, saturated bursts like memory trying to assert itself over reality.

Emotion without tidy answers

The bravest thing about Tere Ishq Mein is that it refuses to clean up after itself. Rai’s storytelling often flirts with melodrama, but here he leans into complexity. The narrative resists moral shorthand. Characters make choices that feel true to their flawed natures rather than to a screenplay’s need for catharsis. As a result, the film lingers in a moral gray zone where sympathy and unease sit uncomfortably next to each other. That tension is the film’s engine; it’s also why audiences may leave the theatre arguing or quietly shaken.

Standout scenes

• A late-night confrontation in a rain-slicked street feels less like spectacle and more like confession the camera near enough to catch the tremor in a hand.
• A wedding sequence that plays like a memory collage, with Rahman’s score folding in and out of diegetic music, makes you notice how rituals can be both celebration and erasure.
• Small domestic scenes a shared tea, a moment of deliberate silence at the dinner table accumulate into a portrait of intimacy that’s both tender and precarious.

What the film asks of its viewers

This is not a film that courts easy likability. It asks patience and attention, and a willingness to sit with characters who are often unlikeable in the moment yet stubbornly human. It’s the sort of film that will tap into different parts of an audience’s experience depending on what they bring: memories of first love, the slow realization of incompatibility, or even the quiet fear of being unseen. The film suggests that love, in its most honest form, doesn’t always heal; sometimes it unmasks what we hide from ourselves.

On pacing and runtime

At roughly two hours and forty-nine minutes, the movie is long, deliberate in its unfolding. Some viewers may feel the length; others will appreciate the breathing room given to scenes that, in lesser hands, would be hurried. There are stretches where the film's tempo loosens into lyricism and others where it tightens, almost to the point of discomfort. The film’s runtime allows for a slow build rather than rushed exposition, though it asks viewers to accept silence and implication as part of the storytelling fabric.

Where it fits in the director’s oeuvre

Aanand L. Rai has often gravitated toward stories about unvarnished human emotion. If his earlier films found poetry in small-town oddities and earnest romanticism, Tere Ishq Mein feels like a matured reckoning: less whimsical, more exacting. It returns to familiar emotional landscapes but with a sharper lens that privileges interiority over spectacle. For fans of the director, this film will feel like a continuation that has chosen to ask harder questions rather than offer easy comforts.

Who might love it and who might not

• Will likely resonate: viewers who prefer character-driven drama and music that functions as a narrative force.
• May test patience: audiences expecting a light romantic comedy or a plot-driven thriller.
• Worth watching: for performances alone; Dhanush, especially, delivers subtleties that linger.

During the screening I attended, conversations after the credits spoke to the film’s ability to unsettle in a way that felt deliberate rather than accidental. People debated motivations; others sat in silence. That reaction the mixture of argument and reflection is perhaps the truest compliment a film like this can receive.

FAQ

Is Tere Ishq Mein connected to Raanjhanaa?

No direct connection exists, though the film’s emotional tone and thematic depth may remind some viewers of Rai’s earlier work. The characters and narrative stand on their own.

What genre does the film fall under?

It’s primarily a romantic drama, but it leans heavily toward psychological storytelling, focusing on obsession, vulnerability, and the shadows within relationships.

Is the film suitable for family viewing?

The themes are mature, and the emotional intensity may not suit younger audiences. It’s better viewed by teens and adults.

How important is the music to the story?

Extremely. Rahman’s score functions almost like a separate narrative thread, deepening scenes and shaping emotional cues throughout.

Does the movie have a traditional happy ending?

No. The film favors ambiguity and emotional truth over tidy resolution. Viewers may interpret the ending differently based on their own experiences.

Final notes

Tere Ishq Mein is not an easy film, and it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s a textured, sometimes bruising study of love’s less comfortable angles: possession mistaken for passion, devotion morphing into erasure, and the quiet cruelty of unmet desires. For those willing to follow it into that interior darkness, the film offers rich performances, a score that haunts, and a director unafraid to let ambiguity sit heavy in the air.

As I left the theatre, a small group lingered on the sidewalk, trading interpretations. A young woman said, simply: “It doesn’t give answers, but it makes you notice.” That, perhaps, is the film’s quiet achievement not to resolve, but to illuminate the places inside us where love and fear meet.