We reported about legendary filmmaker Bharathiraja's passing earlier this Wednesday. The filmmaker's last work as a director is the segment Paravai Kootil Vaazhum Maangal in the anthology Modern Love Chennai. The film tells the story of a woman who accepts her husband's choice to fall in love with someone else. At the promotional events for the film, Bharathiraja spoke about the core theme of the film.

Back then, the filmmaker said that he had been in love from his ninth standard onwards, that he was in love even at that age and that he had no qualms about saying it in public. He added that the message of the film was intellectual and more progressive than his traditional explorations of love in cinema. "I wondered if I should go down this path," the director said, referring to the choice made by the female character in his last film.

Bharathiraja also looked at love from the broader perspective of an artist. "Without it, there is no art. It makes an artist," the filmmaker said.

He is regarded as one of the masters of the romance genre in Tamil cinema. He gave the genre a realistic touch by shooting films in real locations, outside of the conventional studio setting. His films such as Alaigal Oivathillai, Mann Vasanai, and Mudhal Mariyathai explore an intense and poetic form of love. His early work looks at love as it clashes with societal elements such as caste and class differences, age gaps, and religious divides. Therefore, the characters in these films often have to fight for their mutual affection.

In contrast, Paravai Kootil Vaazhum Maangal delves into a more contemporary zone of love, representing a departure from the filmmaker's conventional style. In CE's review from 2023, Sudhir Srinivasan called it a "wildly original, wonderfully written Bharathiraaja film."