Pallavi Anu Pallavi

Plot

Having pledged his love for Madhu (Kiran Vairale), Vijay (Anil Kapoor) finds himself entwined in a close friendship with Anu (Lakshmi), a married woman separated from her husband. Vijay grapples with the definition of love, treading the fine line between trust and attraction, amidst tremendous societal pressures. He is confused whether he loves Anu, an older woman, yet knows that Madhu is ready to accept him as a husband. Amid all this is his youthful streak of rebellion, ready to take on the world despite the taboos attached.

Cast

Production

After completing his MBA and beginning work as a management consultant, Mani Ratnam was keen to enter the film industry and began co-scripting a Kannada film titled Bangarutha Ghani, alongside his friends, the film's director Ravishankar and Raman, who were the sons of director B. R. Panthulu and musician Sundaram Balachander respectively. Featuring Vishnuvardhan, Ambareesh, Roja Ramani and Lakshmi in the lead roles, the film was later uncompleted and shelved. Mani Ratnam then decided to branch out as a director himself and wrote the script of the Kannada film, Pallavi Anu Pallavi, entirely in English, during a single month in 1980. With the script of the film he first met actor Kamal Haasan to play the film's protagonist, after his friend Kitty had helped arrange a meeting with the actor. Haasan refused the offer and demanded changes to the script if he was to play the lead role, but introduced Ratnam to his brother Charuhasan, who pledged to help find the script a producer. Ratnam revealed that he was open to the idea of selling the script to a popular director so that he could learn about film-making during the production process, but had unfruitful meetings with K. Balachander, P. Bharathiraja and J. Mahendran.

Ratnam subsequently met several producers and had the script rejected by over twenty studios, including Rajkannu of Sri Amman Creations and Gowri Shankar of Devi Films. Subsequently, when he found a producer - his uncle Krishnamurthy and T. Govindarajan of Venus Films, the studio were unwilling to back a new cinematographer so Mani Ratnam recruited Balu Mahendra to handle the camera work instead of his original choice, P. C. Sriram. He was able to convince B. Lenin, also his neighbour, to work on the film as an editor after Ratnam had been impressed with his skills in Mahendran's Uthiripookkal (1979). Thotta Tharani joined the team after acquainting with Ratnam during the shoot of Raja Paarvai (1981), which the director had casually gone to watch. For the music of the film, Ratnam had initially signed a prominent composer who had scored music in Kannada films, but wriggled out of the contract after being unimpressed by his work in another film during the period. He asked Balu Mahendra to put him through to composer Ilaiyaraaja, who agreed to do the film for a quarter of his usual remuneration. While selecting the cast for his script, Ratnam approached Lakshmi, who he worked with during the making of Bangarutha Ghanu and she accepted to work on the film and portray an older woman who falls in love with a younger man. The selection of Lakshmi, who was a well-established actress at the time, prompted Krishnamurthy to initially agree to finance the film. Anil Kapoor was chosen to portray the lead role after Ratnam had been impressed with his performance in the Telugu film Vamsa Vruksham (1980) and also helped bring Kiran Vairale into the film after Suhasini had turned the film down. Rohit Srinath, the son of actor Srinath, was a child actor in the film and appeared in Mani Ratnam's first shot.

Ratnam did not know Kannada before directing the film but learned it "on the job", while he extensively researched literature for the script at the USIS and British Council offices in Chennai. With the help of his associate Shivanand, he was able to convert the English dialogues into Kannada and help the actors perform their respective lines, in a language unfamiliar to them. The film was shot in Coorg and Bangalore, close to Venus Films' distribution centre in the city. Towards the end of the production, the film ran into financial troubles and it took twenty one months to finish the final three days of the shoot, owing to call-sheet problems.

Soundtrack

Ilaiyaraaja composed the film's background score and soundtrack, the lyrics for which were penned by R. N. Jayagopal. The soundtrack album consists of four tracks.

In his biographical book Conversations with Mani Ratnam, Ratnam revealed that Balu Mahendra introduced him to Ilaiyaraaja. Ratnam told Raja that he was doing a Kannada film with a very small budget but wanted him to compose the music, while also confessing that he could not afford to pay the latter's market price. Raja agreed to work for one-fourth or one-fifth the amount he was getting at the time. The composer would go on to collaborate with the director for nine more of the latter's films, including acclaimed Tamil films like Mouna Ragam (1986), Nayakan (1987), Agni Natchathiram (1988), Anjali (1990) and Thalapathi (1991).

Release

The film opened in January 1983 and experienced an average success at the box office, performing well in the city's theatres, but not so well in the towns and the villages.

1982–83 Karnataka State Film Awards

Legacy

Pallavi Anu Pallavi's Telugu-dubbed version was released in 1989. Idea Cellular has used the tune of Naguva Nayana as their theme music for the advertisements.