Movie Review: A Aa (Anasuya Ramalingam vs Anand Vihari)

What’s it about?

23-year- old Anasuya Ramalingam (Samantha) gets suffocated with the acts of her strict rich mother Mahalakshmi (Nadiya). When her mother leaves for Chennai on business work, her father sends her to Kalavapudi, where her aunt and her family reside. Until then Anasuya doesn’t know that she has an aunt. Her father also sends his sister’s son Anand Vihari (Nithin), who is working as chef in Hyderabad, to accompany her to the village. While Anasuya’s mother is thinking that her daughter is staying at their home in Hyderabad, she enjoys the stay at Kalavapudi and falls in love with Anand Vihari. But Anand Vihari has problems – he takes loan from his village’s rich landlord (Rao Ramesh) to marry off his sister (Ananya). In exchange of clearing the debts, the landlord asks Anand Vihari to marry his daughter Valli (Anupama). While the jealousy game between Valli and Anasuya is going on, the story moves forward why Anand Vihari and Anasuya families are not meeting, why Mahalakshmi was thrown out of Anand Vihari’s home.

Analysis

In the modern Telugu cinema history (post 2000’s), there is no better dialogue or script writer than Trivikram. In the beginning of his career, as a writer-director he wrote strong scripts with solid plotline but later on he has started embellishing them with other elements – more punch dialogues, more stress on comedy, and peripheral conflict drama. Realizing this, he has come up with this family drama titled ‘A Aa’. A Aa stands for Anasuya and Anand, the protagonists of this story.

But don’t start thinking that this has novel script. ‘A Aa’ doesn’t offer different story but Trivikram has definitely come up with a movie that actually makes one feel for the characters, relate to the situations and also be entertained. He has been fan of popular novelist Yaddanapudi Sulochana Rani and her writings. This movie has influence of her famous novel ‘Meena’, which was also made into a movie by the same name by Vijaya Nirmala starring Superstar Krishna. Yet, Trivikram weaves a story that is filled with his mark. The film starts off slowly but picks up the momentum once the drama moves to village and goes nicely till the interval. Post interval, the drama slackens and meanders to different path. Here the movie turns a little dull especially the long sequences shot at the Inorbit Mall are boring. Also the lengthy pellichoopulu scene looks completely out of sync with the story. But Trivikram ends the film nicely with right emotional touch.

Some scenes that stand out –

1. The sequences of Nithin and Samantha in Kalavapudi in the first half

2. Pre-Climax sequence between Nithin and Nadiya

3. Rao Ramesh’s hilarious dialogues in the end

From ‘Ishq’ and ‘Gunde Jaari Gallanthaindhe’, Nithin has started coming up with appreciable performances, but ‘A Aa’ ranks his best. Director Trivikram has brought out the actor in him. The character he got in the film has range, and he is sincere in his effort. Samantha as Anasuya is perfect too. When Samantha is being criticized for wrong choice of roles, this comes to prove her detractors to go on back foot. She has looked beautiful too.

Malayalam actress Anupama Parameshwaran makes debut in this movie. As a girl obsessed to marry Nithin, she comes up with decent act but her role is very limited. Interestingly, her Telugu dubbing (she dubbed her voice) is also good. Nadiya has done a role that is quite contrary to her 'Atharintiki Daaredi’s role although she has played ‘Attha’ (aunt) to hero. She has given the best. Rao Ramesh as cunning person steals the show. Ananya as Nithin’s sister is good. Ajay has played a comic villain role in this movie. Praveen, Naresh and Raghu Babu are good.

Mickey J Meyer’s music has perfectly blended into the story. Nataraj Subramanian has proved once again that he captures love stories and family dramas beautifully. The cameraman of ‘Jab We Met’ has filmed the entire movie so rich with colorful visuals. The works of art director A S Prakash, and choreographer Sibi needs to be mentioned specially. The film has rich production values. But editing of Kotagiri leaves lot to be desired. A lot unnecessary scenes are kept and pace in the second half is uneven. As writer and director Trivikram has once again proved that he can make good family dramas. After making typical commercial movie like ‘S/o Sathyamurthy’, he has come up with a movie that has his touch of sequences and dialogues. This is not his best work but definitely better one than ‘S/o Sathyamurthy’.

Bottom-line:

With ‘A Aa’, Trivikram presents a romantic drama that has better writing, good performances, and some nice family moments. Nithin
and Samantha shine through in this movie. Though it is inspired by Vijaya Nirmala’s ‘Meena’, Trivikram comes up with his own mark with terrific cinematography and good music.