Mensonges et trahisons et plus si affinités

2004 by Laurent Tirad - French movie

It is high time, French movies are released in India, dubbed or subtitled. I would prefer the latter. It is such a pity that Indian movie lovers are not able to watch these movies. Mensonges.... translated in some ways as My love story.., is not a classic or a master piece. But..

Raphael is a ghost writer, he writes biographies for celebrities. He is assigned to write for the French football team captain, and his girl friend is known to him. In fact, he had a crush for her and had failed to attract her. His present girl friend, Muriel, wants him to write his own book, but Raphael cannot. 

This movie could have been made as a very serious movie. But, the makers decided otherwise and made it like a simple funny movie. But inspite of that, it raises many questions. It is presented in such a way that we can either ponder over those questions, or just ignore it and enjoy the fun being offered.

Raphael is a brilliant character, so are Muriel, the football captain and Claire, the old friend of Rapahel. Through all these main characters, we actually go through a very nice ride, with occassional sentimental scenes thrown in.

Edouard Baer as Raphael carries the movie through out. Alice Taglioni is charming too.

I am still laughing, thinking about some scenes. An excellent funny ride. 

Easan

2010 by Sasikumar - Tamil movie

Kerala always look down upon Tamil, may it be their people or movies or what not. I dont have any idea why this happened. 2 decades back, Tamil movies were really poor and we could understand why people used to talk about Tamil movies, only with a kind of contempt and sarcasm. But Tamil movies made a big leap from the beginning of this millennium, but the attitude of Keralites to Tamil movies remain the same even now. Most Malayaalees still watch only the big entertainer productions from Tamil Nadu, which are typical entertainers of course, and ignore the good ones from Tamil Nadu. The movie distributors in Kerala, who bring in Tamil movies, I think are very well aware of this trend that most good movies from Tamil Nadu are not shown in Kerala theatres. There are so many brilliant movies, to my knowledge, which are never shown in Kerala yet, forget that they never are released. The list of such movies include even the movies which inspite of being different and classy were even super hits in Tamil Nadu. Kalloori and Yudham Sei being the best examples. Easan was released in Tamil Nadu last year, and it got only an average response. However, it is surprising that the movie is playing in Kochi now.

Group of rich youngsters, lead by a minister's son, enjoy their life in the city, girls, drugs and rave parties and what not, but they dont have to worry at all by the law with the kind of political back up one of them has got. The ministers son is kidnapped and a police officer investigates. 

Sasikumar, the director's second effort after the much rated and successful Subramaniapuram, directs and produce this movie, should have been enough reason for this movie to find some response in Kerala. But still it takes about an year to get released in Kerala. But the movie is brilliant only in parts, especially for some sections of the second half, and it is very average for most and there are some moments, when it can hardly manage the standards of those C rate porn based movies of the 80's.

There was a very good plot but the script is a huge failure for most parts and the director seems to have ignored this, nor did he try to make it up. But still, there are moments when we will wish, why did not he try to better the script and the movie. This could have been a real thriller, a very different entertainer...

What was shocking is actually the terrible scenes of violence towards the end, raising questions that if Sasikumar is also going the Ram Gopal Varma way. Is violence going to be an integral part of his movies? Subramanyapuram did have violence, but the movie was a brilliant revenge story and it was supposed to be that way. After all it was a rustic revenge story. Only towards the second half do we know that Easan also is a revenge story, but the violence in the last minutes could have been avoided.

The movie ends up as a pretty ordinary one, unfortunately. It could have been much better. Whatever, Samudrakani, as the police officer, promises a lot. He is an excellent actor and I hope he gets nice roles and he gets noticed.

But the highlight of this movie is a song, brilliantly choreographed and shot. It is very Indian (Tamilian) and very much adhering to Tamil folk steps. But the master stroke is the use of the dress as a kind of prop, in its choreography, occassionally. I love this song and its choreography, that I cant help pasting a link here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgm_YRvhfXg