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Friday, April 26, 2024
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TELUGU HELLO
EDITOR'S PICK
'Hello' has beautiful heart (Review By Subhash K Jha ; Rating: *** )
There is much yet to be said about the first flush of love. Luca Guadagnino's
"Call Me By Your Name" does it in one way. Vikram Kumar, more conservative than
those pants-dropping Italians does it another way in "Hello", the new engaging
Telugu film re-launching young Akhil Akkineni as a man so in love with a girl he
met during childhood at a traffic stop that he can't get pass a traffic jam.
Inured in improbabilities but driven by a kind of endearing innocence that makes
love's most improbable lurches seem tenable, "Hello" gets your attention for its
simplicity and absence of swagger.
The lead pair Akhil and newcomer Kalyani Priyadarshan have a much more difficult
task at hand than it outwardly seems. For most of the film, the couple has to be
in love without showing it to one another.
In most of the supple narrative, Akhil searches for the girl he loves. It's all
about finding rather than enjoying love. This is where action takes over. The
chase sequences last for what seems like an eternity. And we thought only true
love lasted that long!
The narrative is unable to create a sense of deep longing. This isn't that kind
of film. This is Mani Ratnam's "Alai Payuthe" without the angst and the hurt.
"Hello" is high on ideal love. The kind where Mills meets Boon with a heavy
heart and a tune.
The Valentine flavour is pungent. Director Vikram Kumar lays on the schmaltz in
just the right doses. The childhood portions of the romance are shot in a kind
of mellow monsoonal haze of rain and melody on tree tops and at paani-puri
stalls, over-layered with bouts of athletic sprints where the hero must chase
down various goons who inadvertently obstruct his view of ideal love.
In both the romantic and action scenes, Akhil executes himself with an
understated aplomb. None of that big-boy bravado that Telugu-Tamil stars
brandish to appear heroic. However be warned, the chase sequences in a mall and
down a cluttered highway though exciting are unnecessarily prolonged and serve
no purpose except to remind us that the hero is an all-rounder.
Debutante Kalyani has less to do. And she does it without fuss or fanfare.
There is a refreshing quietude surrounding the love relationship in "Hello", as
though the director wanted us to know there is more to on-screen love. While
Akhil and Kalyani convey all the tender longings of a couple fated to struggle
to find each other, Akhil's parents are very effectively played by Jagapati Babu
and Ramya Krishna.
Ramya, fresh from her triumph in Baahubali, has a very moving moment with her
onscreen son when he finally acknowledges her as his mother rather than "aunty".
Such illuminating moments don't occur frequently enough in "Hello". The
narrative is so taken up with following its young hero's pursuit of love that it
barely has time to pause to catch its breath. When it does, there is music in
the air that's hard to define and even harder to resist.
Telugu film star Nagarjuna has been super-busy in the closing
months of 2017, but he is satisfied and happy about the response of the audience
and critics to his son Akhil Akkineni's movie "Hello".
"There was my
son's film 'Hello' and there's my own film with Ram Gopal Varma," Nagarjuna said
"For me, my son Akhil's film was more important than anything else. I've
never been more nervous about aRead More
