Name: With Love
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Released: 2026-02-06
Rating: 7.0
Cast: Abishan Jeevinth, Anaswara Rajan, Harish Kumar, Theni murugan, Saravanan

A series of letters connects strangers across time and distance, revealing fragments of longing, regret, and hope. Each message carries emotional weight that begins to influence real lives. Communication becomes the bridge between isolation and understanding.

With Love

Times of India

The Indian Express

Debutant Madhan’s With Love is the latest addition to the wave of feel-good films that Tamil cinema has been churning out lately. Though the premise isn’t particularly new, the film attempts to find freshness through its characters and their interactions with each other.
Sathya’s (Abishan Jeevinth) sister, who has been pushing for him to get married, sets up a matchmaking meetup between him and Monisha (Anaswara Rajan). Monisha turns out to be his junior in school and the two hit it off instantly. However, Monisha comes up with an idea. She suggests that they try to get in touch and express their untold feelings to their school crushes they aren't in contact with anymore.
It does take a while for the film to find its footing. Initially, it’s difficult not to draw parallels between With Love and other recent Tamil romcoms. The initial interactions between the lead characters also lack a natural ease. However, once the film starts exploring the characters’ flashbacks, With Love becomes more assured and finds its flow.
The film relies heavily on the relatability factor. As in all romcoms, the makers have attempted to slice together situations that the audience can resonate with. But this approach doesn't always work. For instance, a character in the film states that she always knew another character was in love with her because, as a woman, she can sense it. The placement of such broad statements feels engineered for effect rather than organic. It also does not provide further context into the characters’ feelings. With Love works far better when the interactions and one-liner jokes are character-specific rather than when it resorts to being overly generalised.
With Love doesn't reinvent the genre. It follows a conventional pattern but finds the charm in its likeable lead performances, Sean Roldan’s vibrant music and a lovely supporting cast. Abishan, in his debut as a lead, does justice to the boy-next-door role. His unassuming presence helps soften the character of Sathya, who could have come across as off-putting if played by another actor. Anaswara is wonderful. She performs both the emotional and serious moments with a natural ease and without any exaggeration.

There’s a particular kind of Tamil film that doesn’t announce itself loudly. It just sits down next to you, starts talking, and before you know it, you’re smiling at the screen like an idiot remembering someone you haven’t thought about in years. With Love is that film.

Sathya (Abishan Jeevinth) is not your typical Tamil cinema hero. He’s awkward, deeply insecure, and completely terrified of romance. When his sister sets him up on a blind date, he reluctantly shows up, and meets Monisha (Anaswara Rajan), a bold and expressive young woman who is everything he is not. What starts as a slightly uncomfortable coffee shop conversation takes a surprising turn when they realize they attended the same school in Tiruchirappalli, he as a senior, she as a junior. The conversation drifts into first crushes, missed signals, and the kind of unspoken teenage feelings that most of us buried somewhere and never revisited. Monisha then proposes something unexpected: instead of going on another date, why don’t they both track down their old school flames, say what they never got to say, and close that chapter for good?

Debut director Madhan clearly understands that the best romantic films aren’t about grand gestures, they’re about small, truthful moments. A nervous glance across a classroom. A name you doodled on the last page of a notebook. The specific ache of seeing someone every single day and never finding the courage to speak. With Love is stuffed with these moments, and they land because the writing treats them with genuine care rather than as punchlines or nostalgia bait.
What Madhan pulls off structurally is the difference between tone and depth, and he knows you don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. The opening stretch plays like a conversation you’d overhear between two strangers at a cafe and find yourself eavesdropping on, easy, funny, full of little human details. But as the film progresses, you realize Madhan has been quietly laying emotional groundwork the whole time. By the time the story starts asking harder questions about regret, self-worth, and what it means to truly let someone in, you’re already too invested to look away. It’s the kind of slow-burn tonal shift that feels invisible while you’re watching it, but becomes obvious in hindsight, the mark of a writer who trusts his audience. And speaking of which, the comedy in this film genuinely lands.
Abishan Jeevinth, known until now as the director of last year’s hit Tourist Family, proves he can act just as well as he can direct. There’s a naturalism to his screen presence that’s rare for a debut. He plays Sathya’s vulnerability without making it feel performed, and there’s a breakdown scene that confirms this man has serious range. Anaswara Rajan is an absolute firecracker in contrast. Bold, expressive, and completely comfortable in front of the camera, she brings an energy that the film desperately needs to balance Sathya’s reserved nature. Sean Roldan’s music is the invisible thread holding the entire film together. His songs and background score define the emotional temperature of every moment. Shreyaas Krishna’s cinematography wraps the film in warm, golden tones that make Trichy and Chennai look like places you’d want to fall in love in. For a film made with a cast of mostly newcomers, the production quality is genuinely impressive.
The first half, while charming, takes its time getting to the actual premise, you’re nearly at the interval before the real journey begins, and some viewers might feel the setup is stretched. There’s also an interesting tension at the heart of the film that Madhan doesn’t fully resolve: Sathya’s insecurity and social awkwardness are framed almost entirely as endearing traits, when in reality, some of his behaviour deserves more scrutiny than the film is willing to give it. The story occasionally lets him off the hook because he’s coded as harmless, which feels like a missed opportunity to say something sharper about the difference between vulnerability and accountability in relationships.

With Love is the kind of film that won’t blow you away with spectacle, but it will sit quietly in your chest for days afterward. It’s a film about looking back at the people who shaped you without realizing it, about the courage it takes to say what you feel, and about the strange, wonderful possibility that the right person might have been there all along, you just weren’t ready to see them yet.

With Love - Trailer | Abishan Jeevinth | Anaswara Rajan | Sean Roldan | Madhan

With Love - Title Teaser | Abishan Jeevinth, Anaswara Rajan | Sean Roldan | Madhan

With Love (Telugu) - Title Teaser | Abishan Jeevinth, Anaswara Rajan | Sean Roldan | Madhan |Feb 6th

Abishan Jeevinth

Anaswara Rajan is an Indian actress who mainly works in Malayalam and Tamil film industry. She made her acting debut in the Malayalam short film Globe. Her first feature film was Udaharanam Sujatha. Anaswara gained popularity through the commercially successful Malayalam film, Thanneer Mathan Dinangal.

Anaswara Rajan

Harish Kumar 

Theni murugan

Saravanan is an Indian film actor who has appeared in Tamil-language films. He made his acting debut through Vaidhehi Vanthachu, where he portrayed the lead role. He continued to play the lead roles in films throughout the 1990s, later turning into a producer and director for his films

With Love

With Love(2026)

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