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Thenali:
A Kisstory!
Just
when you thought Jyotika was likely to spoil Kamal Haasan's perfect record
of having kissed -- not the coy bee-and-flower stuff, this is the real
McCoy we're talking about -- all his heroines almost since he was old
enough to kiss a girl, we find out otherwise.
The shy
miss had baulked at the kiss initially, and when initial reports had
indicated that there would be no kissing scene for Kamal and his lady love
in Thenali, now on the floors under K S Ravi Kumar's direction,
Jyotika had reacted with an "I am relieved."
She
needn't be: Kamal gets to kiss her after all. "It is all part of the
profession," says Jyotika, resignedly.
That is
not all. Kamal plays a Sri Lankan refugee in the film which is due for a
Diwali release. And he will playback for himself, singing a ditty in Sri
Lankan Tamil with a pronounced Sinhalese accent.
To get
the accent right, Kamal is now taking lessons from Abdul Hameed, the
announcer with the famous voice. Hameed will, in fact, also play a small
role in the film.
As of
now, it looks like things are on schedule. Only two songs remain to be
shot, and A R Rahman took 20 days off from whatever he is doing in London
with Shekhar Kapur and Andrew Lloyd-Webber, to record the two songs.
Which
means that, for the first time, Kamal gets to sing under Rahman's baton.
And no, it is not Vairamuthu with the lyrics -- Piraisudan, Arivumathi and
Ilaiya Kamban have done the song-writing for Rahman's tunes.
K S
Ravi Kumar will make a fleeting appearance in front of the camera for this
film. In fact, he seems to have developed a fondness for doing a Hitchcock
-- in his last directorial outing, he had appeared briefly in the Kick
eruthey song alongside Rajnikanth in Padayappa.
Asked
about the film, Ravi Kumar insists that it is neither a takeoff on Mousehunt,
nor does Kamal play a mentally unstable gent -- which, if you recall, is
what industry buzz has been suggesting all along.
The
director believes that a shooting sequence involving live rats must have
led the industry gossips to come to the wrong conclusion. "It is
actually just a five-minute sequence, a comedy scene involving Kamal and a
mouse," says Ravi Kumar. And the only other thing he will say about
the film, is "It is a comedy-laced love story, centering around a guy
who speaks Sri Lankan Tamil."
But
what is it about? "You go see it when it's done and you will
know," says the director.
By way
of aside, Kamal has earlier done Punnagai Mannan under K
Balachander's direction, wherein his love interest, after a failed suicide
attempt, is Revathi playing a Lankan Tamil girl. Karate maestro Shihani
Hussaini also played a Lankan Tamil in the film -- which, of course, cues
you into the Singalathu Chinna Kuyile song.
This of
course is neither here nor there, but we just thought we'd mention it in
passing.
by
Rajitha
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