Kalavani - A Review By Sreeni R

After reading my Vamsam review one of my readers called me up and said "Bro, i think you don like Village Subjects and that why you don see them or you say they are bad" i was like come on man. "Why do you think so? I'm not at all like that" he said, "Prove it..." my instant reply was "Hmmm... I loved Paruthiveeran, Veyyil, I loved Kalavani...and..." Then i took a pause not because i got exhausted with the list but just because i felt very bad not writing a review for Kalavani which was an awesome film in my perpective. I told my friend, "Bro, thanks for the call, I've got work to do" and the next minute i found myself writing this review.

Very rarely does Tamil cinema, in this case Indian Cinema sees such beautiful films made. Guys I'm gonna tell you that i completely enjoyed "Kalavani". This film directed by a debutant Sarkunam will remain one of the best releases (in terms of quality of content) this year.

I was pretty surprised to read a few reviews which wrote it off as a RUN OFF THE MILL love story. I wont agree to that. In my perspective you can call PAIYAA a run of the mill type but definitely not KALAVANI.

Any Screenplay lesson will tell you this "Design your characters and the screenplay will take care of itself" and fellas, this is 100% true. Any film with a strong characterization will always touch your heart its because you get so involved with them that you start feeling what they feel. What Sarkunam has done is this, PERFECT characterization. Never ever in the film did the characters move out of their lines. They ended the way they started and that is what made me love this film.

Performances were awesome. Lets start with Vimal, he was excellent in this film. In Pasanga i thought that he was good and in Kalavani he has proved that he has a lot of potential. It is Arikki's (Vimal) character on whose shoulders the entire film travels on. There are specific scenes which Vimal just proved himself as "ARIKKI", ARIKKI was Vimal and Vimal was Arikki. Like the sequences where he easily says "Chumma enna kattikaren nu sollu.", also in the crisis situation when Mageshwari (Oviya) calls him when he's riding the bullock cart. The ease at which he handled the character was so brilliant.

Oviya is a new girl i guess and i totally enjoyed her character as well. A typical Beautiful, school going kid in the village. She did justice to her role as well. But her future in Tamil cinema will depend on her second film and definitely not on Kalavani. Saranya is an amazing talent and as usual she does a good job here as well. But the problem is, it is getting too repetitive. We've seen her do this so many times before for instance (thavamaai thavamirundhu, em magan etc) It is a shame that Tamil cinema is unable to tap her amazing talent. Ilavarasu as Arikki's father also makes a mark through his performance, specifically in the Saranya suicide attempt scene and the climax where he flips out seeing his son bring home Mageshwari after marrying her and the way he reacts, when Magesh's brother hits Arikki. Those were particularly good scenes from the film. I don't know the name of the person who acted as Magesh's Brother but he was cool too.

Technically the film suffered a lot due to budget constraints and it shows up. we cannot blame the Director for this, it is very difficult to make a technically strong film with a shoe string budget. The only thing i expected could have been better is music. I can bet that if only the music was GOOD this film would've become a big hit of this season. But I'm very content that Sarkunam will get all the money he needs for his next flick. Cinematography was also adequate and in some scenes it was too good too. The problem with low budget films like this is that the lack of options shows up, and there are sequences where i saw a few unnecessary jumps. This also applies to the Editing of the film. Truly the credit has to be given to both the Cinematographer and Editor for making this film happen because they put their heart and soul into this flick to make it look grand. Of course they needed this strong story line to play with which was so strongly built by Sarkunam.

Kalavani is nothing but a PLATINUM MEMBERSHIP card for Sarkunam which will get him access to great places and people in Tamil Cinema. I hope he uses it smartly. Watch KALAVANI if you wanna see STRONG CHARCTER portrayals, Steady STORY FLOW, LOTS OF FUN, RACY SCENES which donot defy logic, A very nice VILLAGE FILM which is completely FRESH and SURPRISINGLY ORIGINAL.

I loved this film. Hope my friends will agree to this, unlike “Naan Mahaan Alla”. I don't wanna get kicked in my butt again.