Sillunu Oru Kaadhal - while my heart gently weeps

Birgit has left me. This morning she boarded the plane that will take her to Goa, the starting point for her 6 months long India visit. Only yesterday we had a fantastic funny evening with two more superwow women, Sophia and Aradhana, coming up with the craziest ideas but today I´m just sad.

So it is quite clear that I needed a movie for the heart. And none of the 2006 Hindi releases I watched, made my heart ache the way Surya did in Sillunu Oru Kaadhal. I´m a sucker for getting sucker-punched from a movie. It´s an addiction, and as addictions go you need more, you grow resistant. So it has been a while that I felt that.

Six years ago Kundhari (Jyothika) agreed to an arranged marriage in spite of her girly dreams of a love match. And, as it can be seen in the really fun shaadi song, the groom isn´t to keen about the whole thing as well.









But now, six years later, we meet a very happy family. Gowtham (Surya) works as head mechanic for Suzuki in Mumbai. Kundhari has a great job too, there is a sweet, sassy daugther. And lots of love.










Then one day the big shocker. Gowtham is away on a business trip and while looking thru his stuff on the search for a biology project for her daughter (I always said those things were no good) Kundhari stumbles over an old diary of his. And has to find out that Gowtham has a past. In college he, being the local rowdie, fell in love with the daughter (Bhoomika) of an MP. And after a rocky start love became the real thing and plans of elopement were layouted.









Kundhari is devastated and takes a bold decision....

Oh what didn´t I cry. Though I´m not even sure why. It is not a great-great film. The story only works in parts. But still.

Bits of trivia:

• Sillunu Oru Kaadhal was Jyothika and Surya´s last film together before they got married. It flopped.

• The great "New York Nagaram" song is sung by A.R.Rahman himself and in the video Luzerne, Switzerland pretends to be NYC (And I´m actually thankful for it as I´m a very much ootyfied by the NYC overdose the Hindi filmmakers exposed myself to in the last year)

• The comments on Maria´s review of "Boys" turned into a discussion between Michael, her and others about the hotness factor of certain Southindian actors. Sorry, but I still say Suriya wins hands down. With or without beard. Evidence? There you go: 1 2 3 4 5. ´Nuff said.

PS: 24/03/07 Short update. Birgit just mailed. Sab teek hai. Goa bilkul accha hai.

Minnale and 12B - didn´t I watch these stories before?

That just shows my luck at picking DVD´s. Didn´t watch any films for more then two weeks and then I pick those from my huge still-need-to-be-watched pile that are, in the case of 12B a Tamil remake of a British movie I didn´t like too much, and in the case of Minnale the 1:1 Tamil Original to the first movie I reviewed on this blog: Rehnaa Hai Tere Dil Mein.

So I can make this short. For the story of Minnale go the RHTDM post and replace Saif Ali Khan with Abbas (whom I never liked that much) and Diya Mirza with Reema Sen.









My watching RHTDM is a gazillion of movies ago but I still think I liked the Hindi remake better then the Tamil Original.
Mostly because I could not sympathize a bit with Abbas, whereas liking Saif (and the way he played his character) made the heartbreak in the twist a bit more satisfying.

12B is a Tamil version of Sliding Doors with a little different twist. Here we have the guy (Shaam) missing/not missing the bus #12B one fine day and we watch what happens to his love life simultanously in both unfolding storylines.










In one life he gets the girl he was running after (Jyothika) and gets his share of trouble and in the other he doesn´t, and gets another share of problems as he takes ages to find what he has in another girl (Simran) he meets.
Michael at bollywoodblog.de (warning: german text) didn´t like the climax/epilogue. Me neither. One thing in favor of 12B though: there is a special appearance of Suni(e)l Shetty. And he gets soaking wet bhi. Not as good as having John Hannah in Sliding doors, but hey, who am I to complain.