Director: Shekhar Kammula
Producer: Dil Raju
Music Director: Shakthi Kanth
Cast: Varun Tej, Sai Pallavi
Love Stories come with an unannounced tag line that will all look similar at some point or another. But the refreshing point in each of them is that the conflict between the characters, how do they fall for each other? Why can not they be together? What do they lose in a relationship? Why do they need to be together or decide to live apart? Well, Varun Tej and Sai Pallavi starrer, Fidaa also tries to answer the same questions. How well did they respond? We’ll see .
History:
Varun (Varun Tej) lives with his brothers in the United States and his parents have died early. He wants his older brother to get married and convinces him a beautiful morning. As he has medical examinations he does not accompany his brother for the bridal introduction. Both the bride and groom like each other, but Groom asks them to wait until Varun comes and meets the bride. This upset Bhanumathi (Sai Pallavi), sister of brides and welcomes Varun with hardness.
Slowly, both are attracted and decide to propose to each other. First, Bhanumathi wants to open up, but she misinterprets it and then rejects it when Varun proposes. But destiny closes them again and this time, Bhanumathi tries to understand Varun. What happens next and how? You need to see the movie to know.
Performances:
Sai Pallavi is a revelation for Telugu cinema. She proved that her popularity as Malar is well deserved with an impressive performance. It is her character who is the USP of this love story and she carries the film on her shoulders, literally. Such a strong feminine character and beautiful performance is not currently regularly found and we got hypnotized by her vivacity, majorly in the first hour of the film.
Varun Tej established himself as a decent actor and does the same again. His role and the scenes given to him do not require much of him and he delivers what is required of him. With him not trying much different from film to film, his growth seems to have stalled at one point. You’d better try to challenge yourself in your next movie. Even the character who is quite cliché does not help him grow as well.
All other actors including Satyam Rajesh, have much less to do apart from being their regular self on screen. But in a world created by Sekhar Kammula, they all fit well, with decent performance and close to reality.
Techniques:
The most important positive factor in this love story on the screen is the camera work by Vikram C. Kumar. The images you present on the screen have more depth than just being some random images, but the sticky VFX, kill the flow and feel in several sequences. He tries to add a character to the proceedings and succeeds in the episodes of the movie village.
Marthand K. Venkatesh produces a good cut, but his work does not impress him in the second hour. The same scenes are trying to make the same point and the film goes on and on until it reaches its culmination. For the sake of reality, manufacturers especially Sekhar Kammula would have liked that technique, but once he sees his own Anand and Godavari, he might be able to understand how much he hesitated in the second hour.
The music of Shakti Kanth is good and above all, the already popular song, Pilla Renuka, looks beautiful on the screen too. Other songs do not impress much. Jeevan Raju’s Back Ground gives life to the movie in the first half, but in the second hour even the young musician could not make an impact with the rhythm of the snail and repetitive sequences.
Written and directed by Sekhar Kammula, the films try to be a saga of refreshing love with a premise, which we are used to seeing many times. The film looks like a rip off from Hum Apke Hain Kaun and many Telugu movies, but the heroine character makes all the difference. The strength of the writer Sekhar Kammula lies in the creation of two strong characters and the works of Bhanumathi for most of the time. But he misses the mark by writing Varun convincingly and we do not understand the conflict.
We can smell the resolution the moment the conflict arises and the way it is formed, it does not bore anything new and we suddenly find ourselves with repetitive scenes that make us scream, get to resolution get to resolution. The climax should have been a great emotional journey for both Varun and Bhanumathi.
