4 min readUpdated: Apr 11, 2026 09:01 AM IST
Toh Ti Ani Fuji movie review: This Marathi language feature involves a pair of former lovers accidentally bumping into each other in Tokyo years after their painful parting. The meeting between Toh (He, Lalit Prabhakar) and Ti (She, Mrinmayee Godbole) causes facades to be peeled off, re-opening old wounds: can these two forgive each other, and is forgetting on the cards?
Directed by Mohit Takalkar and written by Irawati Karnik, Toh Ti Ani Fuji is the kind of grown-up relationship drama which feels fresh, contemporary and urgent: as Toh and Ti are drawn to each other, trying to see how they fit in, we see just how complex the thing between two people can be, where ‘extreme hatred and extreme love’, as one of the two puts it, can appear to be the two sides of the same coin.
Watching this film, which clocks in at a leisurely two hours– with some of those moments feeling stretched, but never superfluous even if the flashbacks become a tad too much– you are back in that middle-of-the-road zone which Hindi cinema used to inhabit in the 70s and 80s, when flawed adult characters were allowed to exist, and play off each other.
Watching Toh and Ti circle around each other afresh, in a city far away from the place where they first fell in love, rubbing up against spots still raw from back then, reminded me, a little, of the Richard Linklater movies, in which the lovers walk and talk, pause and fumble, and then start again, in a life-like manner. When have we not felt like shooting our partners, and jumping their bones, all at the same time?
There are other characters here, primarily a cute—not cutesy, thanks be– little boy (Deven) who is revealed to be Ti’s son, but the identity of the father takes a while to unpack, even though we know, of course, we do. An old friend of Ti’s, a simpatico man, also in Tokyo, also deeply connected to the twosome, leaves us wondering, albeit briefly, if we are in for a threesome.
Parental figures, not very sympathetic, show up, helping us know our characters and what makes them tick: Ti’s invalid mother who binds her daughter to herself till the threads unravel, Toh’s keeping-the-balance mother and snooty father whose wealth is not the barrier that the latter thinks it is.
But the film works best as a two-hander, coasting on a surprisingly frank sexual register which feels like actual passion, unlike the anodyne stuff we get in most mainstream Hindi cinema. Prabhakar is a volatile charmer who can slide from ardour to murder in a heartbeat: the onions need to be sliced, not chopped, otherwise all hell can break loose. He’s got serious daddy issues, and can go to any lengths to get his point of view across: the prospect of being a daddy himself opens up a possible new path for him – will he be able to walk down it?
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Godbole is a delight, showing both strength and vulnerability, doing what she needs to survive, and yet not losing her essence– her reading a Sylvia Plath novel feels appropriate, as does her warm Indian clothes being switched for Japanese pastels. She makes He come alive, and vice versa, and the two create that fire that only two people– totally into each other, the world be damned– can.
This is a well-written, well-directed love story– the titular Mount Fuji a fleeting physical but constant metaphysical presence–whose crests and troughs feel real and relatable.
Toh Ti Ani Fuji movie cast: Lalit Prabhakar, Mrinmayee Godbole, Kabeer Deven
Toh Ti Ani Fuji movie director: Mohit Takalkar
Toh Ti Ani Fuji movie rating: Three stars
