Paruthiveeran

(India, 2007, 139 mins)

35mm

North American Premiere

PROD: K E Gnanavelraja
SCR: Ameer
CAM: Ramji
ED: Raja Mohammed
MUS: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Cast: Karthi, Priyamani, Saravanan, Ponvannan, Sujatha, Panjavarnam

The only late [Berlin Film Festival] screening to blow me from my seat--less an elegy than an Exocet--was India's Paruthiveeran, shown in the noncompetitive Forum side show. Ameer's Tamil epic is a caste-crossing tale of doomed love combining song, dance, drama, comedy and last-reel tragedy. A boy and girl, childhood sweethearts, grow up to learn that when friendship turns to feud between clans or classes, there is no longer such a thing as innocence of feeling or purity of passion. This is elemental cinema, overreaching, richly wrought and acted by everyone as if to save their lives (including nonprofessional locals). The story climaxes in a shock sequence that devastates us as cathartically as the climax to The Wild Bunch or The Deer Hunter. Will someone please buy this film for Europe, the US or anywhere else with an interest in the kind of moviemaking that sears the soul and leaves a brand on the memory?--Nigel Andrews, Financial Times.

Paruthiveeran is a drinker and a rogue. But underneath his rough exterior beats a surprisingly tender heart, as only Muthazhagu knows. After he rescues her from near drowning, she swears he will be the only man to ever see her naked: a fateful declaration that will come to bear in the most tragic fashion imaginable... Ameer's film possesses a near-Jacobean sense of drama, encompassing everything from slapstick humour to doomed love to violence. While there are some echoes of another pair of ill-starred lovers, this is very much a Tamil film, specific and idiosyncratic in its details, as rich and ripe as Southern India.

           

Sponsored By:

Shaw Multicultural and RedFM

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