If Romeo can love, why must Juliet die?

The story of a college student in love with a man twice her age becomes the highest-grossing Malayalam film of all time. That headline does not adequately capture the magnitude of the success of Bethlehem Kudumba Unit (Bethlehem Family Unit), which is now streaming after storming theatres.

The stand-out aspect of its box-office triumph is that it was achieved without compromising on qualities that have drawn cinephiles across India to middle-of-the-road Malayalam cinema: the ability to entertain with culturally rooted, socio-politically insightful, slice-of-life sagas, slickly produced on modest budgets.

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Director Girish AD's movie, co-written by Girish and Kiran Josey, stars Mamitha Baiju as the teenaged Ashley and Nivin Pauly as her neighbour Justin. A kudumba unit is a group of Christian families in a parish who pray together and operate as a support network. Justin is popular in this community. Ashley, the new arrival, is initially attracted to him on discovering their shared taste in music.

The Ashley-Justin romance is not a grand love of epic proportions. In fact, like Henry Tilney in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, he seems to fall for her at first simply because she fell for him. Once that happens though, they make an endearing couple, owing their allure as much to the well-rounded characterisation as to the lovable actors playing them. The people around them too are well-written.

There's a minor irritant in the narrative in the form of a largely Hindi background song when the action briefly shifts to Goa, in keeping with Malayalam cinema's practice of sticking Hindi into settings where it is irrelevant or incongruous. But it's hard to be mad for long at this sweet, funny film.

An uncomfortable truth must be addressed here though. A film featuring a gender reversal - a woman of 36 or so, in love with an 18-year-old man - is unlikely to be made in India, and the rare older-woman-younger-man screen romance that does get made is treated differently. Case in point: Dimple Kapadia's character conveniently dies in the Hindi film Dil Chahta Hai.

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Do older men and younger women fall in love in the real world? Of course they do. But so do older women and younger men. Yet, that reality does not yield fun films with age-appropriate casts and happily-ever-afters. Meanwhile, the happy older-man-younger-woman romance is a genre unto itself, delivering several classics, among them IV Sasi's 1984 hit, Kanamarayathu (Hidden in Plain Sight), starring Mammootty and Shobhana.

Male superstars also routinely act with women half their age in films portraying them as contemporaries, while their actual female contemporaries struggle for roles. Enjoyment of Bethlehem Kudumba Unit is contingent on not dwelling on this troubling larger context.

Considering that Ashley is just exiting childhood, Justin is carefully written, so as not to give anyone reason to bracket him with groomers. Not only does he not pursue her, he does not even think of her in such terms, until a relative directs his attention to her evident interest.

Even then, he hesitates due to her age. Their social milieu, in which families often dictate women's choices, brings an added dimension to the theme. (Though here, Ashley's mother is unfairly villainised more than her irresponsible father, who deserves no better.)

The casting is smart. Mamitha is 17 years junior to 42-year-old Nivin, which is about the same as Ashley and Justin's age gap. However, the fact that Mamitha is in her mid-20s, visually gives the Ashley-Justin equation a subtly different dynamic from what it might have been if Ashley was played by an actual teenager.

In a sense, Bethlehem Kudumba Unit marks an evolution from Girish's previous hit. Premalu was purportedly equally about the man and woman in a relationship. But in truth, he was interesting and written with depth, while she was gradually sidelined. If Bethlehem Kudumba Unit is offered as reparation for Premalu, then all is forgiven, Girish.