Love- A different perspective

‘Blessed be the one who gets his wages on Friday, for he gets a weekend to burn his money.’

This weekend I found out that I was running low on my movie stock. So I went to the usual piracy centre.
After picking out the usual quota of classics, I moved to the Tamil section and found a DVD with cover picture of a hot lady finding it difficult to hide her assets (read cleavage). As usual good senses failed to prevail. I picked out the DVD.
When rest of the world went to bed I remained awake to satisfy my carnal pleasures.
The movie satisfied my desires and gave me a few good lessons on sexuality.

I couldn’t make out what was written in DVD cover, so could make out the title only when I started viewing the movie. It was the much controversial ‘Velu Prabhakarin Kadhal Kathai’ (which literally means Velu Prabhakar’s love story. Velu P is the name of the director). This movie got into the news for Censor Board’s reluctance to let it go through. The news had floated around that it had complete exhibition of nudism. Velu had to edit the movie to get the nod. Hmmm! How sad.

But guys before entering into the details let me tell you it’s a movie with some content and controversies are no public gimmicks.

The movie opens with a dedication to motherhood. A baby is shown being formed from the embryo and its delivery. Right from the scene where a baby is breast fed so openly, you will realize it’s a no holds barred movie.

First things first. Technically this is a real crap. Amateur acting, cinematography resembling a soft porn and poor dialogue presentation are the trademarks.

If you ask me to tell the reason for the singular reason for failure, I would say director didn’t have much clue on why he made the movie. Initially you think it’s his way to educate the common masses on sex. Then it seems the director wants to portray his difficulty in making this movie. Then it is about evils of caste, inability to accept lust and love. Then in the end you feel it’s a semi autobiography.

He could have made a sensous classic like Kamasutra or a ‘Rathinirvedam’(Malayalam). At times he goes on rambling about his difficulties in making the film, the next moment about casteism, the next moment about lust inspired love.

Through out the movie director appears on the screen delivering his sermons. Films are meant to give a message whether good or bad through characterization. Director couldn’t help but show his utter lack of creativity.

The film opens with a crowd chasing a young guy and beating the hell out of him for peeping in when a woman is changing her dress. Director makes his grand entry and lectures the crowd of this neo morality.

Relevant parts of the sermon:

‘You accuse him of perversions. But in act he is one among us. We all have our own perversions. But this guy gave into a moment of weakness.
Why does people like him have to succumb to these circumstances. Because he has a sexual need suppressed in him. We do not find women doing these sort of things because right from their childhood they see the body of men in various forms of undress.
Allow boys to grow up in a similar way so they find that women’s body is also natural’

You may find this a bit amusing, but I found it true to an extent. If you put in front of me the same woman in two forms- one perfectly naked and other barely covered up I will pick the second one. It is because we go after something that is prohibhited to us. In the same way Eve went out for the fruit prohibited to her.

There is another good one when he is accused in the court by the opposite lawyer for making a film depicting Indian women as sexual objects while culturally they are considered as goddesses. To this Velu remarks ‘Please don’t say that we consider women as goddesses. Even before ascending to the post of President of India the woman has to touch her husband’s feet. We can at least consider women as humans’

Coming back to the movie, people standing on higher moral grounds can call it a soft porn. I am a bit immoral. So I am not going to judge. But there are many instances when director fell below the standards. As mentioned director was not sure about what to do.
He tried to touch upon everything and in the end ended up doing a bit too amateur work.

There are three heroines in the movie based on whom the entire plot turns. The story happens in a small village torn apart by caste differences.
As you suspected hero hails from the upper strata and the lady no.1 from the lower one. They fall in love with each other. The guy acts without much pretensions and hence does a decent job. The girl is also good enough in the acting department.
The only good portion in the film is the relation between the two. She tries to hide his love for him which burst out at last, resulting in a hot dance number. In fact it is one of the rarest occasions where the heroine appears totally nude in a song. The song is sensuous. The censor board tried to label the movie as ‘XX’, but since the director raised the trump card about sexual freedom the board settled for an ‘A’.
The boy and girl decide that it is not possible to get married in these difficult situations and decides to take the easy way out- suicide (after some intimate sex). The director appears again under mysterious circumstances and lectures to them on love and courage. The couple agrees to fight it out.
Sadly the narrow minded villians who finds about the relation beheads the girl. The guy out of blind rage beats his father to death. Typical to modern Tamil Cinema this scene is shown in all gory violence. May be, director wanted to say that when love is denied to someone he turns a maniac.

As for the second heroine there is no connection with the caste. She is just a hot hot village maiden who goes to work in a teacher’s house. The teacher is single and ready to get hitched. The poor guy couldn’t keep his eyes off the ample bossoms when the pallu drops off, and so couldn’t I.
Mind you the lady is a real good character who was cheated by the man she loved. She was labeled as a prostitute by the village. But she worked hard to feed her girl through honest means.
A peculiar mixture of love and lust is shown. The guy is concerned about her well being too. She asks her to marry him and the guy is shown as pretty serious about it.
I haven’t seen many Indian directors portray lust as a positive quality. So may be this feature of director trying to draw the similarity between the two and his philosophy of lust coming out of love and vice versa is pretty interesting.
But sadly the guy expresses his inability to marry her after having plenty of sex sessions preceded by a rape. The woman spits on him which he accepts meekly. Regarding the rape scene, I haven’t seen such a kind in a long time. It used to be the regular feature in Malayalam films of 80’s.
If the director had treated the story with little more creativity and sensibility the treatment would have been different and hence a new dimension could have been shown.

The director completely loses the plot when he comes to the third lady. She is a beautiful one married to a poor lower caste. She wants a good life and develops an illegal relation with a high caste elder who is the father of the boy mentioned above. He enjoys his sessions with her in spite of his tough stands on caste in public. And as usual the husband finds out about this at last.
The only positive out of this is the hypocrisy shown by the society elders when it comes to their sexual pleasure and the ample bosoms of the luxury searching heroine.

There are innumerable movies which can be dubbed as opportunities lost. The film maker gives into the commercial success sacrificing the art and message.
There was a school of thought in psychology that said sex is the emotion that motivated men to live.
The film caters to the average tamil staple of violence and cleavages.

So to sum up I would say it is a bit above a porn movie. In the end it would give you some sexual fulfillment and some message to carry to bed.