Preethse: A Violent Love Story!
What kind of movie advertises itself as “A Violent Love Story”?! Oh, it’s an Upendra movie, I should have guessed. Upendra is famous for this kind of stuff. Preethse (“Love Me”), a 2000 Kannada movie, is actually a remake of the 1993 Hindi film Darr which I haven’t seen but which also is calling itself a violent love story, so maybe I can’t blame Upendra for everything this time. The movie is directed by D. Rajendra Babu and the main cast includes Shivrajkumar as Surya (“The Sun”), Upendra as Chandru (“The Moon”), and Sonali Bendre as their common love interest Kiran. The short intro video clip before the DVD’s main menu confirms my preconception of what kind of movie this is going to be.
When love exceeds all limits it becomes pure.
When the purity is hurt love becomes insane.
This is a mad love story!
The story is a simple love triangle drama: Surya loves Kiran and Kiran loves Surya. They have a good friend, Chandru. Kiran has a very obsessive secret admirer which happens to be Chandru but nobody knows it’s him. Chandru tries to assassinate Surya so that Kiran would love him instead. The rest of the story is all about how they find out about the stalker’s identity and who gets to keep the girl.
The songs are nice and catchy and most of them fit well into the story. Music director Hamsalekha got a Filmfare Award for this movie.
Previously I had seen Upendra in Upendra and A which were also directed and written by Upendra. Even though the story of Preethse isn’t by Upendra, his role was very loyal to the crazy Upendra-ish style that I’ve seen in his other movies. However, technically Preethse is far from Upendra’s directorial films – no more hyperactive editing for example.
The violent love story wasn’t as violent as I had feared. I actually even liked the movie a little. The WTF feeling wasn’t as strong as during and after Upendra and A. I still have H2O to watch before I run out of subtitled Upendra DVDs for some time.
It’s not rare that Indian films have crazy stalkers but few are as crazy as Chandru. (The Telugu-dubbed version of this movie has even been titled as Sadist.) He reminds me a little of Allu Arjun as Mr. Perfect in the 2009 Telugu movie Arya 2, except that in Preethse the stalking part lasts the whole movie and the final outcome is different. I can’t wait for S/O Satyamurthy (releasing this month!) which will have two of the world’s creepiest stalkers in a single movie!