Last stop on the Asian Express
Trip Start
Jul 21, 2006
1
62
Trip End
Ongoing
Chennai, India
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Gruffly hand them over, shouting "it's a *&^%ing ridiculous rule!" Our bags are searched at the door, not for weapons or explosives but something far more deadly: food. John is caught red handed with his souvenir bottle of whiskey. One girl has three mints removed from her person for safe keeping.
Anyway, the film was good entertainment if not the full rollercoaster of tragic emotions that was intended. So un-PC it wouldn't get a rating in Europe, it features a moustacioed hero who fancies a feisty village girl. However his dad decides, as a huge favour, to offer the hero up for marriage to his friend's disabled but virtuous and beautiful daughter, since her last suitor ran off in disgust when her limp was discovered at the bride viewing. The hero is understandably distraught - he fancies the village pot-maker.
The disabled girl's family find out about this other girl and take the most obvious course of action: they burn down her house whilst she and her elderly mother are sleeping (saved of course by our hero). As a result of all this turmoil the disabled girl attempts suicide. Then the dad dies because of all the worry caused and our hero feels so guilty about the whole mess that he marries the disabled girl after all. But only after the pot-maker tells him it's ok, no hard feelings.
Great stuff. The Tamil films prefer very different-looking heroes and heroines to the hip slick Hindi types. The men are brawny with bushy moustaches, the women are voluptuous with proper fleshy tums and double chins. Anything goes except kissing on the lips, leading to some hilarious innuendos. The director was obviously a keen fan of the films Nine And A Half Weeks and Ghost from the amount of food, fingers, tongues and clay pottery wheels that featured.
We got a chance to go behind the scenes at Chennai's AVM film studios - actually we just turned up and, because we look so obviously foreign, got waved past all security, free to amble around. It's a business park of warehouses containing wobbly, unconvincing sets in various states of dismantlement, repair or re-use. None have air-con so once the lights are switched on, the set becomes a giant sauna; make-up slides off skin on a film of perspiration and huge fans have to be brought in to improve the stagnant, sweat-saturated air. To be honest, it looked a lot like a student production with better equipment and ten times as many people wandering about, all with very singular purposes: fan operater, script reminder-er, powder puff guy... These Tamil films get churned out so fast that it doesn't matter if the lighting's a little flat, the acting melodramatic or the sets a little wobbly...it just adds to their unique charm.
