Premam (2015)

Genre: Nostalgic Love
Undercurrent: Friendship, Youth
Language: Malayalam
Watched: Online 1080p, with English subtitles

Premam is a movie of actors, music, lyrics, creative bits of direction, details and photography. No scene or shot in this film is new, yet it evokes a freshness that you seldom associate. I am not big into Malayalam films, so the evolution is foreign to me but the strength of the movie stands out through what is felt within us. Nivin Pauly's (as George) three characters are well played and seemed quite easy to a person of his caliber. He seems to be a strong method actor and his general style in life-like characters stand out each time. The best performance is of debutant Sai Pallavi (as Malar) who elevated her well written role to a level beyond every other character of the movie. She is a package full of surprises, be it her dance, expression or her ease infront of the camera.

Here is a picture of a coy smiling teacher looking at a student she is in love with (top left in this pic). To the right is a bold college student, a rowdy literally, flirting with his teacher. The lower half of the pic shows audience's reaction to Shruti Hassan's saree and style in the Tamil remake compared to Sai Pallavi's modest presentation. I think the character of Malar got a cult following in Kerala.

It seems natural to expect Kerala's actors to be awesome. To see the improvisation from Sai Pallavi, watch the deft change of her expressions at each shot (Check out the song Malare). When a scene is made of many combined shots, expressing quickly in a short frame is essential as it is hard to live up to the often dramatic-cheesy lyrics. To do that consistently over so many frames is a special performance.

Also, as a mass coming-to-age film, the Pauly swagger is awesome - black shirt with cooling glasses, moustache, beard, lungi and an attitude of an invincible super-hero that only a college don can have! But he is a rowdy who dances, cries, has a failed teenage love story, is afraid of his lecturers/principal when he faces them and a temperamental bully - way too realistic and seemingly complex for such a simple movie's character but the hero has to carry just 1 or 2 moods at a time and he does well. I am surprised that he just played it casually and Malar's role just made it work. I wonder if that can drive girls to the movie like Malar pulling nostalgia of each man out there strongly. The rest of the crew and story is adorable and is more like a collage of good short-films than a movie. The intertwines and the current is almost inexistent as the flow is only with the feel and not with the story.

Anything shot in Kerala is refreshingly beautiful, probably because we can't feel their summer heat or their incessant monsoon from a film. In each shot, a small witty punch or a new angle is present along with some feeling - friendship, love, flirting, tease or so. The comedy attempt from the lecturers is below par. The punch line 'the second film in the history of world cinema with nothing new' is apt for it but wouldn't completely agree. Although, the recipe is the same - the making and the output are an absolutely fresh treat. Post-production work is excellent, especially sound editing for a movie with so much background melodies. For the wit, lyrics, music, casting, acting and that sense of nostalgia, I liked Premam very much.

My favorite scene is easily where George unknowingly calls on Malar, his teacher, to rag her. That is because an exact thing happened to me with a very pretty young lecturer we had in my engineering days. Quite surprisingly, the feelings and the reactions are exactly the same except that none of us fell for her to make our Premam.