Aruvi

Aruvi
Poster
Directed by	Arun Prabu Purushothaman
Written by	Arun Prabu Purushothaman
Produced by	S. R. Prabhu S. R. Prakashbabu Bhaumik Gondaliya
Starring	Aditi Balan Anjali Varadhan Lakshmi Gopalaswamy
Cinematography	Shelley Calist
Edited by	Raymond Derrick Crasta
Music by	Bindhu Malini Vedanth Bharadwaj
Production company	Dream Warrior Pictures
Distributed by	Dream Warrior Pictures
Release date	14 June 2016 (2016-06-14) (Shanghai) 15 December 2017 (2017-12-15)
Running time	130 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	₹10 million[1]
Box office	est. ₹350 million[1]

Aruvi (pronunciation (help·info)) (transl. Stream) is a 2017 Indian Tamil-language sociopolitical film written and directed by Arun Prabu Purushothaman, in his debut film. The film features Aditi Balan, Anjali Vardhan, and Lakshmi Gopalaswamy in the lead roles, while Pradeep Antony and Mohammad Ali Baig play supporting roles. The film portrays the events that occur in the life of Aruvi (Balan), a rebellious young woman who seeks to expose the consumerist and misogynistic nature of modern civilisation, while attempting to find meaning during a period of existential crisis.

Aruvi was produced by Dream Warrior Pictures and was released globally on 15 December 2017. It was praised for the performances of the cast, especially of Balan and the film's direction. This movie going to remade in Hindi with Fatima Sana Shaikh playing as lead. This movie was dubbed in Hindi and released with the same title.

Synopsis[]

A gentle girl born and brought up amidst the ever-growing eco-social-consumeristic environment finds it difficult to fit in the society. She decides to take it hard on the people. What she does is the rest of the story. Aruvi speaks about the social anguish of a girl.^[2][3]

Plot[]

The film begins with Aruvi (Aditi Balan) and Emily (Anjali Varadhan) being interrogated by law enforcement officer Shakeel (Mohammad Ali Baig), who suspects Aruvi to be part of a terrorist organization. Aruvi's parents and friends are called for interrogation who talk about Aruvi's childhood and adolescence. She is a lovingly raised, innocent girl from a middle-class family. Things take a turn on her life when her family turns against her and kicks her out of the house, accusing her of having brought shame to the family. Her college friend Jessy (Shwetha Shekar) takes her in for a while, then moves to a hostel and lives with Emily, who is a transgender woman. They work for a man called Arulmani as tailors in an NGO. One day, she goes to Arulmani crying, asking for a loan of 1 lakh rupees as her father (Thirunavukkarasu) has suffered a minor cardiac arrest. She then takes off and does not return. Occasionally, she undergoes touch therapy with a Swami who uses hypnosis to heal stress.

Emily approaches the producers of "Solvathellam Sathyam," a reality show that showcases people's problems on TV. She complains about three men who raped her friend Aruvi. Assistant director Peter (Pradeep Antony) agrees to telecast their problem and calls the three men for interrogation. The next morning, shooting starts as the host Shobha (Lakshmi Gopalaswamy) asks Aruvi to narrate what happened to her. Aruvi then explains that the three men are Jessy's father Joseph, Arulmani, and the Swami. Joseph had sexually abused Aruvi when she took shelter in his house. Arulmani had taken advantage of Aruvi's situation when she begged for a loan, and the Swami had hypnotized and raped her. Aruvi then reveals that she has had AIDS for the past two years (which had occurred due to her getting infected through a wound in her mouth after an injury while having coconut water; the seller had inadvertently shed his blood into the straw while cutting open the coconut). She meets her friend Emily in an NGO as both of them have AIDS. Aruvi asks the three men to apologize, but Lakshmi turns against Aruvi, accusing her of intentionally infecting those men. Aruvi is appalled and states everything wrong with the society and the unnecessary stereotypes that every common man has to conform to, in order to fit into this consumeristic world.

The director uses all this drama to his advantage as this would improve his show's TRP rating. Aruvi pulls out a gun and shoots the director in the arm. Later, she calms herself and apologizes to everyone, but as she gets up to leave, Arulmani tackles her and hits Emily. This maddens Aruvi, and she starts hitting Arulmani with a rebar and takes everyone hostage, holding them at gunpoint. Aruvi then takes control and subjects the hostages to trivial games and activities; the main motive was to impress Aruvi and share others' feelings with each other, failing which Aruvi threatened to shoot them dead. The hostages abide by Aruvi's instructions and go with the activities. The sound of the commotions cause a wide public stir and police to surround the premises. Aruvi gets a call from Shakeel, and she assures the safety of the hostages and her apprehension to him after a while. During the course of the game, everyone seems to get affected by Stockholm Syndrome, and they become friendly with Aruvi. She even forgives the three men who raped her.

Aruvi suffers a nosebleed by the time she surrenders to the police. Since Aruvi and Emily are AIDS patients, they cannot be arrested and have to be isolated inside the camp. Aruvi's condition continues to deteriorate as she loses a lot of weight and becomes incapable of taking care of herself. One night, she disappears from the camp and moves to a village all alone. After a few days, all of Aruvi's friends (the hostages) receive a video from Aruvi on Facebook. The video shows her crying and explaining how she misses everyone and speaks about all the regrets in her life. On seeing the video, Peter gathers everyone and takes them to the village in which Aruvi currently resides (an allusion to Peter's story that he narrated to Aruvi during the hostage situation). Peter gifts Aruvi a card with " Love you forever Aruvi, Peter", written on it. Touched, she reciprocates his feelings (this too was a revisit of Peter's earlier proposal to Aruvi during the incident, albeit in a bland way before).

Everyone cheers Aruvi up by playing the bottle game and having a great time with her to make the last few days of her life sweet and memorable. The movie ends with Peter capturing the image of Aruvi smiling.

Cast[]

• Aditi Balan as Aruvi
• Anjali Varadhan as Emily, Jessica
• Lakshmi Gopalswami as Shobha Parthasarathy, TV show host
• Pradeep Antony as Peter
• Mohammad Ali Baig as DGP Mohammad Shakeel Waqaab
• Madhankumar as Venkataapuri Sri Badri Sesaadri Deetsidhar
• Shwetha Shekar as Jessy
• Arnold Mathew as Karuna, Aruvi's brother
• Hema as Aruvi's mother
• Thirunavukkarasu as Aruvi's father
• Balaji as Subash (Office boy at the channel)
• Apoorva Natraj as Jeyashree
• Kavitha Bharathi
• as young Aruvi

Production[]

The film was produced by S. R. Prabhu and S. R. Prakashbabu of Dream Warrior Pictures at a production cost of 2 crore, after Saguni (2012), Kaashmora (2016) and Joker (2016).^[4] In an interview, S. R. Prabhu says, "We are so much proud that Aruvi has become one of the best films produced under our banner."^[5][6] Also he said, the reason to produce this movie was, after the director narrated the story, he couldn't get the story out of his mind for a week.^[7][8] Arun Prabu said Aruvi was not a realistic film, and described it as a "new-age masala film" since it mixes various genres, including action, comedy and drama. He did, however, choose to avoid "songs with a number of dancers in the background", a recurring feature of masala films.^[9]

Cast and crew[]

To cast the titular role, established actors Nayanthara, Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Shruti Haasan were approached by Arun Prabu but was declined due to various reasons.^[10] The production team had also been scouting for new Tamil speaking talent on various social networks.^[11] Over 600 applicants had applied and auditioned for the lead role, out of which the team chose Aditi Balan.^[12][13] Excluding supporting actor Lakshmi Gopalswami, all the cast members of the film were debutantes. Though Shwetha Shekar had appeared in several commercials and short films, this was her first feature-length film.^[14] The film's cinematography was handled by Shelly Calist while editing was done by Raymond Derrick Crasta.^[15]

Soundtrack[]

Bindhu Malini and Vedanth Bharadwaj composed the soundtrack and background music,^[16] while the lyrics were penned by Kutti Revathi.^[17]

Release[]

Aruvi was screened at various film festivals within India and overseas, including the 2016 Shanghai International Film Festival, before being released globally on 15 December 2017. The film was distributed to over sixty screens across the United States, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.^[18] The digital rights were sold to Prime Video.^[19] The satellite rights of the film were sold to Star Vijay.^[20]Amazon has acquired the digital rights of Aruvi^[21]

Critical reception[]

Aruvi received highly positive views upon release. Critics were particularly appreciative of the performances of the protagonist Aditi Balan and the supporting cast, and the film's direction.The movie is directed in a beautiful manner and has an unexpected plotline.^[22] Baradwaj Rangan of Film Companion called it "an ambitious, solidly written satire that takes an issue and does very unexpected things with it" in his review.^[23]

Accolades[]

Notes[]

References[]

External links[]

• Official website Archived 22 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine
• Aruvi at IMDb