I ruvar Ondranal is a campus love story. Nothing unusual there. The real surprise is in the casting, as director Anbu G. has managed to rope in a real-life couple to play the lovers in the just-released film. It wasn’t the plan, but when he learned that Krithika Malini, the girlfriend of the hero P. R. Prabhu, didn’t mind acting, he decided to cast her. “She had the looks and spoke Tamil too,” he says. But shooting wasn’t as easy as he imagined. “There was a scene in which the hero looks at the heroine for the first time. I struggled to get that one right, as Prabhu had already known Krithika for a long time.” This film has been a long time coming for Anbu, as it’s been his dream for the last 13 years, after assisting director A. R. Murugadoss on Ramanaa (2002). He says he was very close to making a film with actor Vijay, but it failed to take off at the last minute. “I’ve narrated at least four stories to him, even though it is well-known that he doesn’t generally listen to more than one from a director.”
The Vijay-effect is perhaps still there somewhere, as the director says that the ideal title for this film would be Love Today , the title of a 1997 Vijay film. “ Iruvar Ondranal is about love in today’s world. I noticed firsthand a girl who proposed to a guy and got turned down. But a few days later, she began dating the guy’s friend. All three now hang out together without any discomfort. I found this interesting.” The director isn’t one to judge though. “It’s how love has evolved. Who am I to say what’s right and what’s wrong? We must simply accept how things are.”
Interestingly, with the exception of one song, Iruvar Ondranal has been completely shot on film. “My cinematographer Kumar Sridhar wanted to shoot in a colourful way. Despite digital technology being the norm, we find that we get better output on film.”
The director has also used footage from the real-life wedding of Prabhu and Krithika in the film. “We thought it’d be novel to use it at the end.” This probably is the first occasion when a wedding video is getting screened in multiplexes.
