Slices of south - South of Nowhere

Thursday, December 09, 2004

7/G Rainbow Colony - A fine attempt - Movie Review

Letter to SelvaRaghavan
To start off, overall, the movie was good. But there are quite a few good as well as bad points about the movie. Will start with the bad points and move on to the good.

First of all - choice of artistes. Though Ravi has tried his best he was a pale imitation of dhanush in ur earlier movie. Quite a few resemblances in mannerisms and dialogue delivery etc - probably your influence. As you had accepted, dhanush would've done a better job of this role. The father's role played by vijayan. Though vijayan is a good actor, his (dialogue) diction is more of a malayalee which doesn't quite suit the story. Few of the hindi speaking characters' lip sync is not proper when they speak tamil. The heroine's brother character is used only for the cricket match scene and he is not found in the movie thereafter. Veteran manorama has been misused. Rest of the artistes are adequate.

The hero shown drinking everyday at the terrace of a residential colony / place somehow doesn't gel properly. Again few activities of hero and his friends, like the dance they do in stage during a function in the colony looks odd considering their parents are out there in the crowd watching them.

Few things like the heroine's mom asking the heroine to try out an inner garment was not essential for the storyline but can be considered as a commercial element.. Purists would put that as cheap taste catering to front benchers. Yes, the movie never proclaims itself to be perfect but these cud've been avoided.

The most important scene of the movie, the turning point perhaps, where the hero takes the heroine along to a hotel - the one night stand, has executional imperfection. The way in which the hero and heroine go along with manorama and get the room booked was not perfectly conceived. More importantly, I share an idealogical difference with that scene. It is realistic that two lovers can have sex and lead their respective lifes with different partners after that. It is practical and does happen in society. But the heroine saying "I would like to be a perfect wife for atleast one day with you" and inviting him for sex is total profanity. This implies a role of wife gets fulfilled or met only through sex and sex alone! I beg to differ.. Again the lady tantalisingly teasing him and inviting him for the same is even more outrageous - more of what a lady in nude bar would do! In my view, the movie falls notches below just in this single scene. The same thing could've been conveyed much better...

The hero seeing some christian missionaries / sisters when he tries to commit suicide and he getting some intuition / advice from the heroine in a church etc. looks to be some influence of a foreign language movie though it certainly may not be so. It somehow stands alien...

If I had been harsh at any part until now, ignore the words but do take the message behind. Moving on to the good parts :)

- Sonia agarwal's commendable job.
- The entire thought process / sequence/ screenplay being new to tamil cinema
- Yuvan's high quality music (minor negatives being a hindi female singer in the audio cassette butchering tamil in a soulful song and slight resemblances to Kathal Kondaen music)
- High scores on technical elements
- Last but the most important - A very good direction through which the audience are completely engaged throughout the movie. Screenplay stands as a backbone for direction.

Congrats selva on a fine show. Waiting for many more better efforts from you...