Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Deepavali

Starring Jayam Ravi and Bhavana in the lead, the movie is a mixture of Kamalahassan and Sridevi's Moondram Pirai and a typical love story.
Susi (Bhavana) is the daughter of a Bangalorean mafia leader. She hates her violent father and loses her mother and her partial memory in an accident, which was an attempt by her father's enemy to kill him. Driven mad by people asking her to remember things, she arrives in Chennai to live with her father's ex-employee's family. His neighbour is none other than the local Samaritan Mudalaiyar. Billu is his son.
Billu falls in love with Susi at first sight, when he is sent to pick her up from the station. They hang around as friends and one day, Billu's family saint predicts that Susi will be his wife. There is awkwardness in the air after that incident between them, until Susi tells him the truth about her past. He gives her courage by telling they will pass all hurdles and go to the doctor next day for checkup.
With Susi's medical condition, she will be able to remember what she had forgotten, but she would forget what happened after the accident i.e. the times with Billu. Susi takes a promise from Billu that no matter what, he should never leave her, even if she denies or insults him.
Seeing the continued fear of her father, Billu calls her father up to Chennai. After some threats from her side and peace talking from his, the marriage is fixed, but her father cheats everyone, beats up Billu to a precarious condition and leaves with his daughter. Seeing Billu beaten up badly, Bhavana gets cured and forgets everything about him by the time they reach Bangalore.
Now, Bhavana is leading a new life with her fiancee, when she sees Billu creating a havoc during her ceremony, following wherever she goes and starts to request him to leave her. Billu keeps reiterating what she had said to him as his lover. Eventually just before her marriage takes her back to Chennai forcefully and tries to remind her of the life she led there. With no success, she is almost ready to leave, when she changes her mind (even though she can't remember anything) and returns to Billu.
Lots of fighting (without gore), but 20 minutes of fighting straight is too much for a rear end on a bad chair to take. We'd rather see the story move. Jayam Ravi looked well in the movie, except for his squeaky girly screaming pitch (It almost reminded me of M.G.R.'s voice after he recovered from being shot in the neck). There was an excessive hint of Madras Thamizh in the dialogues to a point where I wasn't even following what they were trying to say (but apparently it was funny, since my sibling was laughing to it). Songs weren't that memorable. Bhavana was bearable and the story itself seemed somewhat too cheesy, when she jumps into water, without knowing how to swim and the Holi festival protection of just letting some random guy overpowering you without reason. Except for the fact that Jayam Ravi was the better looking guy compared to the paunchy fiancee Susi was going to marry, I didn't really see a reason why Susi would get together with Billu, unless she really remembered him! And honestly, Ravi could have a better name than that of a cat!

No comments: