Movies that talk about urban relationships doesn't come often. But then urban relationships do change and evolve along with them even villages and small towns too experience a change. What if all that is explored connecting it to an accident on a marriage day? Let's see how it will be as it is the story of Pelli Roju movie ...
Story: On an eventful day, which happens to be marriage day of Kavya (Nivetha Pethuraj), lives of Raj (Dinesh), RJ Susheela (Riythvika), RJ Suresh (Ramesh Tilak), Lakshmi (Miya George) change all off a sudden with one incident.
Kavya is in love with her colleague Raj but him being from different caste and lower income class becomes a problem for Raj. Kavya's father too doesn't approve it much but leaves it to his daughter's choice.
RJ Susheela is looking to get married from past 5 years but due to her job and color she doesn't get a good groom. She does find one Bhaskar (Lingesh) but then he is too confused to marry her or not. She breaks their engagement and falls in love with RJ Suresh, her colleague. Suresh attends the marriage to talk to his parents about his marriage with Susheela.
Lakshmi decides to elope with a person who likes her during one of the marriage related talks as her father doesn't look to get her married soon and waits for a perfect match of his liking. She at one time even accepts an old man.
How these people's lives change on Kavya's marriage day is the story!
Performances: Dinesh, Nivetha Pethuraj, Miya George, Rythvika, Ramesh Thilak, Lingesh are good in their characters. Nivetha impresses us more than others. Miya is good too.
Dinesh looks a tad caricaturish in his approach and seems like holding it back too much when some more expressiveness is desired. All others are good and perfectly fit in their characters.
Technicalities: Justin Prabhakaran composed music for the film. He did a fine job with songs and BGM is well suited. But he does tend to dominate the dialogue with his score at times and that should have been avoided.
Gokul Benoy's visuals are good and he came up with a distinctive approach to colors at different places and that makes every place distinctive. Make-up team seems to have been asked to tan the lead actresses to match male leads!
V J Sabu Joseph as an editor tried hard to not confuse the audiences with a complex narrative. He did his best to keep all the characters and their arcs relevant.
Sankar Dass wrote the movie along with director Nelson. His script seems to work when we take the each character out individually and discuss their story. He did try to give the entire thing a meaning and that is not lost on screen.
Nelson Venkatesan the director and writer of the movie took lot of inspirastion from K. Balachander films and did his best to engage us into the proceedings. He did make an effort to deliver all the emotions and twist ending seems to be the best portion for the movie.
Positives: Music, Performances, Twist ending, Universal story
Negatives: A bit slow pace narration
Analysis: As a film, Pelli Roju fails in leaving an after taste that twist endings of K. Balachander used to do. The master used to really work on the characters for us to feel the weight of the proceedings and also think that in a weird way the entire scenario does come to a satisfactory ending, even though one may have chosen another one over what he did.
Nelson's film keeps taking inspiration from Balachander films to deliver the rollar-coaster ride of emotions. He worked out on the emotions to give the twist and all the events a beautiful relevance. It is a cool film to enjoy on a lady weekend like this one.
Filmybuzz.com Rating: 2.75/5
