Pournami (2006 film)

Pournami
Directed by	Prabhu Deva
Produced by	M.S. Raju
Written by	Pavan Kumar Paruchuri Brothers
Starring	Prabhas Trisha Charmy Rahul Dev Sindhu Tolani
Music by	Devi Sri Prasad
Cinematography	Venu
Edited by	Krishna Reddy
Production company	Sumanth Art Productions
Release date	21 April 2006
Running time	167 minutes
Country	India
Language	Telugu

Pournami (Full Moon) is a 2006 Telugu language film directed by Prabhu Deva. It stars Prabhas, Trisha, Charmy, Rahul Dev, and Sindhu Tolani.^[1] The movie had a lot of pre-release hype because of Prabhas and Trisha's earlier hit, Varsham. The film was dubbed into Tamil and Malayalam^[2] under the same name and into Hindi as Tridev: Pyar Ki Jung (2008).^[3] The film was partly inspired from the 2001 Brazilian film Behind the Sun starring Rodrigo Santoro which in itself was adapted from an Albanian novel by Ismail Kadare. Shooting locations included Virupaksha Temple, Elephant stables, Stepwell in Hampi.

Plot

Film starts in a distant past where a remote village in Andhra Pradesh suffers from a drought for a very long time. A woman (Veda Sastry) from a traditional family comes forward to dance in a Lord Shiva's temple to appease Shiva to bless their village with rains. She dances for seven days and nights continuously before she dies in exhaustion. Finally, they have rains, and their longstanding drought ends. From then they make it a tradition that a girl from that dancer's family should dance in Shiva's temple for every 12 years on that auspicious day.

Story comes to present day. Now they are expecting Pournami (Trisha), elder daughter of the family to dance on the occasion. But just before few months from the festival, she goes missing, and everybody thinks she eloped with someone. Then, everybody's attention turns to Pournami's younger sister Chandrakala (Charmy) to dance on the occasion, but their father (Chandra Mohan) wouldn't agree. Later, it would be revealed that Pournami hasn't eloped, but her father sent her away to protect her from their village Zamindar (Rahul Dev) who wants to make Pournami his concubine. He fears that same fate might befall on Chandrakala, so he wouldn't agree to teach her dancing.

Meanwhile, Chandrakala's stepmother (Manju Bhargavi) rents their penthouse to Siva Kesava (Prabhas), a Western-style dance instructor. After some fights, Chandrakala develops feelings on Kesava, but he doesn't reciprocate. Slowly he reveals the flashback where he and Pournami married, and she dies in an attempt to save his life. She tells him her dying wish that her sister should dance in the temple to save the tradition. He promises her that he would make it happen.

After knowing this, Chandrakala agrees to learn dance with her father's blessings. Kesava promises them that he would protect her from Zamindar, and he saves her when Zamindar tries to abduct her. She tries hard and becomes a skilled dancer in a very short time. Finally, she performs ardently in the temple, and again their village gets blessed with rains. After some drama involving the Zamindar and Kesava's fiancee, finally Chandrakala and Kesava become one.

After few years, their daughter doesn't want to learn the dance. Film ends with Kesava narrating the tradition to their daughter in that temple.

Cast

Crew

• Director: Prabhu Deva
• Screenplay: M.S. Raju
• Story: M.S. Raju
• Dialogue: Paruchuri Brothers
• Producer: M.S. Raju
• Music: Devi Sri Prasad
• Cinematography: Venkat Prasad
• Editing: K.V. Krishna Reddy
• Stunts: Peter Hein
• Choreography: Prabhu Deva
• Lyrics: Sirivennela
• Playback Singers: K. S. Chithra, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, Srinivas, Sumangali, Tippu, Shaan, Gopika Poornima, Sagar

Music

The music and background score was composed by Devi Sri Prasad and lyrics were penned by Sirivennela Sitaramasastri. The music of this film was critically appreciated. DSP was well acclaimed for bringing the variations in generes from classical, melody, western and to pop. The songs were well taken. The tracks "Bharata Vedamuga", "Muvvala Navvakala", "Yevaro Choodali", "Pallakivai" were huge hits. The track "Muvvala Navvakala" sung by K. S. Chitra alongside S. P. Balasubrahmanyam gained more popularity and Chitra was nominated for Best Playback Singer Female- Filmfare Awards South, DSP made the song "Muvvala Navvakala" using the background score of his own work from the film, Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana.^[4] DSP composed 7 tracks and 2 instrumentals for the film. He has composed few more instrumentals, but they are not included in the audio track. He has used Chitra's voice for 4 of the tracks for giving an essence of perfect classical music. Especially the track "Bharata Vedamuga" helped DSP to prove his classical talent as well it was an evergreen chartbuster & is recognised as most fine works performed by Chitra, DSP, Sirivennala and Charmi as well.

References

External links

• Pournami on IMDb