Kandukondain Kandukondain - get your Jane Austen together

I´ve never read Jane Austen. Oh, I own some of her books but I´ve never got myself to actually read one. It just didn´t grab my attention long enough to get into it. But thanks to cinema there is no shortage in movie adaptions so I´m at least able to join disussions about the characters and storylines without making a complete fool out of myself.
Its actually weird that I never got into the whole Brontée sisters, Austen thingy. Their books are perfect masala material. The changes of charakter´s backstories or storylines have to be minimal to fit it into "the masala scheme"









So what sets this apart from the Emma Thompson/Ang Lee version? Duh! Obviously its set in rural Tamil Nandu and Chennai (interesting sidenote: all the characters refer to Chennai as Madras) and its placed in present times. It also has the beautiful music of A.R.Rahman.









For all those who, as I, have not read Sense and Sensibilty, here a short breakdown of this Tamil version:
Widowed mother of three lives in house of very sick father and takes care of everthing with the help of her 2 older daughters (Aish and Tabu) One day Nana dies and leaves everything to "before-dads-death-never-had-the-decency-to-show-up" son and greedy wife. So Mum and daughters get mobbed out of the house. Not a too big problem wouldn´t the two sort of fiancées of the sisters get a grip on their life. Tabus guy, an actually really nice aspiring movie director forgets everything around him due to trouble with his first feature and stupid "we get married when I´m a made man" attitude. Aish´s beau is a stockbroker who goes broke with his chitfund (chitfunds have a sort of negative image in movies hai-naa? look BaB) and whines a lot. I don´t like him. But not all is lost as Aish has also caught the interest of Major Bala. From the outside not the perfect match. Mid-fourties. War veteran who lost a leg. Very grumpy. But heart of gold. Digs music. Has orchid farm.









And performs sort of an guardian angel function for the family with an emphasis on Aish´s career as singer. So after the granddad´s will disaster and ensuite heavy drama not all is well but teek hai thanx to the gutsy daughters and the Major. Until the second wave of drama rolls in and it gets highly dramatic right until the end.








Kandukondain Kandukondain (there has to be a short cut for that. Velu? Any idea?) is easily my favorite Jane Austen adaption. Even my beloved BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejustice with Colin Firth has to come in later now. Dehko naa!!