Breaking Stereotypes: Lakshmy Ramakrishnan Interview

Only Kollywood interacted with Lakshmy Ramakrishan, whose second feature film Nerungi Vaa Muthamidathe is all set to hit screens this Friday (October 31st).

Lakshmy Ramakrishnan is a woman of clarity. If you’ve seen her directorial debut, “Aarohanam”, which I think was one of the best Tamil films of 2012; you realize how crystal clear she was with her subject at hand. While “Aarohanam” was raved by critics, for some reason, it was labeled as a women-centric film and that killed its prospects at the box-office, forcing her to make another film aimed at breaking all stereotypes associated with women filmmakers.

Her second directorial, the strangely titled “Nerungi Vaa Muthamidathe” (NVM), which releases in cinemas Friday, is a “commercially viable” outing, says Lakshmy, and adds, “This time I’ve made a film with a strong male lead. It will be a commercially viable and successful project and I hope to break all women-centric stereotypes with it. It will be a highly entertaining film that will address a burning issue”. In “Aarohanam”, Lakshmi addressed bi-polar disorder through the story of a single mother who goes missing. The film featured Viji Chandrasekhar in a strong female lead. In her second project, she will focus on the recent petrol crisis.

According to Lakshmy, NVM is a not a film that’s intended to deliver a message.  “The film is based on the simple premise that all of us need a crisis to realize the value of a relationship. Can we imagine a life without oil? If there was a petrol crisis, how will we react to it? If there was no petrol crisis, my film can’t be made,” she said. And she promises that it’s not preachy. “It’s is packaged in such a way that it doesn’t appear preachy. The story will throw light on how we are abusing our resources,” she noted.

While “Aarohanam” catered to smaller section of audiences, NVM attempts to entertain the masses. Ask Lakshmy what’s the need to make a film for commercial cinema lovers, she says, “This film is my test to see whether I can cater to the general public’s taste. There are so many ways to make a film, but eventually it’s your judgment about whether this is the way your film will appeal to masses, which finally matters. That judgment decides the success of your film”. Lakshmy’s definition of entertainment is far different than how most Tamil filmmakers perceive. Entertainment need not always be humour. It could be something that can engage the audience throughout the film. When you make an entertaining film, there is more reach and that will eventually trigger a thought process.

Farah Khan has proved with “Happy New Year” that even women can make highly successful and profitable commercial ventures, contrary to the notion that only male filmmakers are masters of commercial cinema. Lakshmy says she didn’t find it challenging to make a commercial film. “It’s a big leap for me. ‘Aarohanam’ was a very small film, but this film is big, has so many actors and locations. It has parallel stories. When I started to shoot, it looked so challenging but I enjoyed making this film so much. I realized it always looks big and challenging until you start it. Once you start it, everything becomes easy”.

Giving in to the commercial aspect, Lakshmy has tried her hands at a fight sequence for the film. “We have a fight scene and I’m so excited about it. It’s a very realistic fight scene, quite different from what we usually see in films. But it was choreographed with the help of a stunt master. We also have four songs”. Four parallel stories run within the film and Lakshmy says shooting them was a challenge. “Shooting these parallel stories was like making four different films. Each story is a film on its own, and they had to be condensed. All the stories had to be blended into the main narrative organically. It was a challenge to maintain the culture of all the four tracks and characters,” she said.

The only way Lakshmy differentiates NVM from “Aarohanam” is through the use of technology. “Technically, my second film is a lot of different from my first. A lot of equipment that we’ve used are first time for me. It’s been a great experience. We used heli-cam to shoot some important scenes. I got to experiment as well as freak out,” she says.

NVM features Shabeer, Pia Bajpai and Shruti Hariharan in the lead roles. As part of the interview, I also spoke to Pia and Shruti about their experience on working in the film.

Pia, the young and bubbly actress, has come a long way since her debut in “Poi Solla Porom”. With one of the biggest Tamil hits “Ko” to her credit, she’s been very choosy about her films. Ask her about NVM, and she can’t stop raving about the experience.

By working in the film, Pia says she learnt the art of acting subtly “Lakshmy likes subtle acting and she grooms her actors to follow that. Most actors don’t react the same way to a scene on and off the screen. If they genuinely try to do that, that’s called overacting. But Lakshmy never asks her actors to act; she wants them to be natural. She wants her actors to react how they will respond to a situation in real life. I found it a little awkward initially but I’ve started to really enjoy it”. She has acted sans make-up in the film because that’s the way Lakshmy prefers. “I think because she wants us to act subtly, she’s asked me to act without make-up and wear very simple costumes. She focuses only on the performances of her actors,” she said.

The film also features actress Viji Chandrasekhar in an important role. She plays Pia’s mother in the film. Piaa enjoyed working with Viji and was touched when she said she wants her daughter to be like her. “Although Viji plays my mother, we’ve become good friends and we spend a lot of time together on the sets. She told me that she likes how independent I’m in life and the struggle I’ve gone through to be an actor. She
told me she doesn’t mind her daughter to be like me. I didn’t react but I knew she meant it because she’s mature and would
n’t say these things for the sake of it. Nobody has ever told me that they want their children to be like me. Coming from Viji, this was a huge compliment for me”, said Pia.

Pia has immense respect for Lakshmy, whom she considers a very strong woman. She says, “Ours is a male-dominated industry. When you do something good, people say maybe luck and time was in your favour. When you do it the second time, some are waiting to find out what you’ve done and others want to pull you down. But these things won’t bother Lakshmy because she’s very strong and she knows she has to prove herself again”.

SHRUTI HARIHARAN

“Lucia” fame Shruti plays an important role in NVM. Shruti agrees that Lakshmy has broken stereotypes associated with films made by women. “A woman’s perspective of films is very emotional-based and is seldom about the commercial aspect of cinema business. We (women) do it with our heart. I feel she’s broken that notion about women with the film,” she said.  Talking about her collaboration with a female director, Shruti said,” She’s also extremely professional, organised and a little bit on the edge when it comes to completing work on time. Rarely do you find organised sets, especially in Kannada cinema. More importantly, since she’s an actor too, that largely helps her in direction”.

Shruti has known Lakshmy from a very young age, but they haven’t kept in touch for many years. After seeing her performance in “Lucia”, Shruti was cast in NVM. Ask Shruti about her experience of working with Lakshmy, and she said, “Working with Lakshmy has been wonderful. She’s like a mother on sets. I’ve never been pampered so much by my director on any of film sets before. I think that just comes very easily to her (Lakshmy)”.

Shruti’s character has a separate story that runs parallely with the main story. “My story entirely runs in a song and it connects to the main story. That idea kind of excited me. I don’t play the lead heroine, but I trusted Lakshmy and agreed to work in the film”.