Toh Ti Ani Fuji: Difficult relationship or a difficult phase? The Marathi equivalent of Past Lives has a haunting after-effect

We meet Toh (He) and Ti (She) when they are presumably in their early 20s. He appears to be a carefree man who comes from a wealthy family but hates his father, making his financial situation a wee bit complicated. She comes from a seemingly middle-class background, who understands the value of every penny and is drowning in debt whilst struggling with a personal tragedy. Their love, it appears, was born out of a passion but impulse takes over ever so often, thus testing an already complicated relationship of two individuals who are grown adults, but aren’t mature enough to handle the drama that comes with adulthood.

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She sees him as a man-child who hasn’t done much to earn her respect, and he sees her as a constantly agitated, selfish woman who only thinks about herself. She has baggage, and a lot of it, and he is dealing with his issues of self-worth, where he constantly seeks her validation. He isn’t a pillar of support when she needs one, and she isn’t a counsellor when he needs one. The mismatch between the two would be obvious to any third person but that’s the thing about relationships: you always know what’s wrong when it isn’t your problem to solve.

When they accidentally meet almost eight years later in Japan, things seem to have calmed down but that’s where the ‘Mount Fuji’ from the title comes in. Their current state is quite like the dormant volcano that casts its shadow on the city. She is a mother of a seven-year-old and has a full life, and he appears to have found stability in his work.

Toh Ti Ani Fuji is slightly reminiscent of Celine Song’s 2023 film Past Lives, where two childhood friends, who dated briefly in their adulthood, reconnect after a decade or so. She has obviously moved on, but he is still holding on to that memory. In Toh Ti Ani Fuji, neither has moved on completely – she is raising his son, and he still holds grudges against her (she does too). The big question that looms over her throughout the film is revealing the truth about their child as he still doesn’t know that she was pregnant when they broke up, and you see her constantly struggle with that thought. Telling him would open a pandora’s box; but this isn’t the kind of secret that you can keep for life.

Toh Ti Ani Fuji makes you wonder if some relationships are difficult per se, or they are just undergoing a difficult phase. At one point in the film, soon after her mother’s death, he tells her that if they make it through this, they could face anything, and she immediately says, “But we are not through this yet.” And turns out, they never get through their troubles. The troubles change form and get progressively worse until she starts fearing for her life while dealing with an irrational man who has no control over his temper. They hurt each other in ways that’s hard to forget, no matter how much time has gone by. The blame game never stops, and in their case, it probably never will.