chakravyuha

It’s remarkable how Indian cinema has re-treaded the guy-loves-girl/guy-loses-girl/guy-to-parents-disapproval-followed-by-parents coming around formula for, well, since when they started making films. Bomarillu, from the Telugu film industry, was a colossal hit last year and it too retreads the same formula. You can judge how well a movie did in India (and this is especially true for Telugu films) by how long it takes for them to get released on DVD in the US. For Bomarillu it was a very very long time indeed. After finally watching the movie on DVD (it released recently), it’s easy to understand how it did so well.

One of the reasons is how the relationship between Siddhu (Siddharth, last seen in his wonderful turn as an insolent son in the Amir Khan’s ‘Rang De Basanti’) and his father (Prakash Raj) is portrayed. The father is a domineering man. He is the head of a joint family of eigth, is a successful businessman and has pretty much hijacked the decision making process of the entire family. Siddhu resents this very much and this leads to a spectacular showdown towards the end of the film, where all his resentment comes tumbling out. This scene is why I particularly liked the film. It’s very dramatic but it is treated carefully and neither character loses balance. There is no ear-splitting music. There is crying and everyone in the family is emotional but even then the proceeding are never absurdly dramatic and logic never leaves the room.

The other reason is the character of Haasini (Genelia D’Souza) who plays a “happy-go-lucky” girl. The way Genelia D’Souza plays Haasini as a trusting, twittering, chattering, cutesy girl almost makes you feel that’s she’s off her rocker in the beginning. All that changes in the second half after a series of events leads her to land in Siddhu’s (the guy of the guy-loves-girl story) house to live for seven days. She’s pretty much the same but something has changed and by the time the film reaches the end you see that she’s not exactly off-kilter. She really is happy-go-lucky and there’s nothing really wrong with her. She’s an anomaly in the modern world. A trusting person ready to place faith in any person who talks nicely to her. Whether such people exist or not depends entirely on how jaded your world-view is and how cynically you view the rest. The ‘innocent’ girl is a common staple of Indian cinema, but the way Genelia plays the character, it comes off rather heartwarming in the end and that’s what you will remember.

Sure enough, Bomarillu has all the masala-movie ingredients. A coterie of comic friends for our hero, the heroine’s father (a doting, decent drunkard and a minor player in the proceedings) and song-and-dance routines. However, in the end the movie makes you feel good. It’s well made, is not loud, very funny in parts and Haasini’s character and the father-son relationship are well played out. Boy loves girl and the father disapproves but what’s refreshing is the the way the father comes around with things never going over the top.

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