De Monte Colony

There’s this school-mate of mine, who is currently in Gurgaon. During the course of a casual conversation yesterday evening, we suddenly decided to watch the Tamil movie, “De Monte Colony”, playing at a multiplex here. We reached the mall just in time, booked our tickets and just had enough time to gulp down our dinner. Whilst guzzling down mouthfuls of lassi after dinner, I fondly recalled the good times we had together when we were in school and subsequently college. It was common for us to cycle down to Mount Road, catch up with a movie, and have our favourite lassi (in the narrow lane behind Devi complex) before heading home. Reminiscently, I told him things have changed now. He argued that things were still the same except that we now drove cars instead of cycles and were having not-so-tasty food at more plush places! The jury is still out on this topic. But after watching “De Monte Colony”, I can say that Tamil cinema has indeed come a long way from the times I cycled down to Mount Road to catch up with the latest releases!

The movie directed by debutant Ajay Gnanamuthu, will provide you with thrills rarely seen in Tamil horror movies. Post-Chandramukhi, a lot of horror flicks have been made in Tamil. But almost all of them have had a comedy track and a love angle mixed into the scheme of things to keep a wide range of audience happy. Ajay Gnanamuthu, a former assistant of AR Murugadoss, steers clear of this established “masala” formula and comes up with a winner! The screenplay is a tad slow and could have been racier, especially the opening scenes. But once the movie gets into the main plot, a good 20-odd minutes after the start, it keeps you gripped, providing thrills that have never been seen before in Tamil cinema.

The wonderful background score of Keba Jeremiah, a guitarist working for AR Rahman, adds to the effect. Yes, the background score gets a bit shriller in the second half, but purely for the work he has put on in the first half, he deserves a special mention! It would indeed be worthwhile to say that his background score takes the movie to a different level!

Aravind Singh’s camera work too deserves a mention. This former assistant of Santosh Sivan adds to the feel of the movie with his lighting and wonderful angles.

Overall, “De Monte Colony” is worth a watch not only for horror movie aficionados, but also for people who love the “new age” Tamil cinema. It is definitely not for kids and the weak-hearted, though!

P.S: Such was the effect of this movie that when I was woken up by a power cut in the middle of the night yesterday (coincidentally it was exactly 12 in the midnight when I checked the time in my phone!), I had a few scenes from the movie playing up in my mind. It took a few minutes for me to “erase” them out and catch up with my sleep again!

36 Vayadhinile

Honestly, the only reason I booked tickets for Jyothika’s comeback film “36 Vayadhinile” was just to ensure that my free movie ticket vouchers (offered by American Express) weren’t wasted! I knew this was a heroine-centric movie and the remake of a Malayalam hit (I didn’t even know the name of the film it was based on). I didn’t have any expectations about the movie and in fact, as I walked into the multiplex, I was visualizing a very clichéd plot. How wrong I was!

Right from the initial scenes, when the director keeps you guessing about the purpose of the police department conducting background verification on Vasanthi Tamilselvan, played by Jyothika, to the end, when Vasanthi Tamilselvan meets the President of India, this film is refreshingly different. Director Roshan Andrews breaks all clichés of a heroine-centric movie and comes up with a winner. If there’s something he could have done differently, it’s the characterization of Tamilselvan, Vasanthi’s husband, played by Rahman. A husband-who-treats-his-wife-like-a-maid is the only cliché that the director ends up dishing out in an otherwise different movie. And yes, we are thankfully spared of scheming, villainous in-laws. We get to see folks who are very supportive of their daughter-in-law!

This performance is undoubtedly, Jyothika’s best! She has shed plenty of kilos, looks much younger and has come up with a performance of a lifetime! Be it as a simple middleclass working woman in the first half or as a woman who is out to prove herself in the second half, she is simply amazing!

Special mention to R.Diwakaran’s camera for capturing the small by-lanes of Triplicane beautifully! It surely did bring back fond memories of the place where I grew up! Surprisingly, nobody from Triplicane told me about the shooting of this film!

Lalitha Vijayakumar’s rendition of the title track “Rasathi”, a catchy tune composed by Santhosh Narayanan is also worth a mention.

Jyothika couldn’t have selected a better script for her comeback film! This film is not just about feminism, woman empowerment etc. It’s also about dealing with mid-career blues that everyone goes through! This film is definitely worth a watch with your entire family! Go for it!!