Ullam Ketkumae

Ullam Ketkumae
DVD Cover
Directed by	Jeeva
Produced by	Mahadevan Ganesh Usha Venkatramani
Written by	Jeeva Sujatha (dialogues)
Starring	Shaam Arya Laila Asin Pooja
Music by	Harris Jayaraj
Cinematography	Jeeva
Edited by	V. T. Vijayan
Production company	G. V. Films
Distributed by	APINT Ltd
Release date	3 June 2005
Running time	156 mins
Country	India
Language	Tamil

Ullam Ketkumae (English: Heart wants more) is a 2005 Tamil romance film directed and co-written by Jeeva, with dialogues by Sujatha. The film features Shaam, Arya, Laila, Asin and Pooja in the lead roles as five college students. The film's score and soundtrack are composed by Harris Jayaraj, while Vairamuthu penned the lyrics for the songs. The film tells the reunion of five friends who were together at college and exploring their relationships during the years. The film released after several delays in 2005 and went on to win critical and commercial success.

Plot

The movie is all about a group of five college friends — Shaam (Shaam), Imaan (Arya), Pooja (Laila), Priya (Asin) and Irene (Pooja). The friends gather for Imaan's wedding, years after everyone has parted ways.

The movie starts with Pooja leaving USA to go to Imaan's wedding. Meanwhile, back in India, everyone else is helping Imaan with the preparations for his wedding and catching up with their long lost college friends. The movie goes through series of flashbacks of old memories during their college days. Imaan and Irene meet for the first time, after a long time. The first flashback occurs. They were once in love; however it didn't turn as Imman had expected it to be.

Another flashback occurs when Shaam gets reminded of Pooja. She is a fun-loving tomboyish and naive girl, who is best friends with Shaam. While he realizes he's in love with Priya and on the other hand, Pooja realizes she's in love with Shaam. Shaam and Pooja had respectively decided to reveal their love to the ones they love on coming Valentine's Day. On that day, Pooja learns beforehand that Shaam is in love with Priya instead. Heartbroken by what she has just learned, she decides to keep her love for him a secret. When Priya finds out Shaam's in love with her, she rejects his love. As she believes in a more traditional approach towards finding a life partner. She reveals to him that she will be getting married, right after their graduation, to the man of her parents' choice.

Now back to the present day, the wedding day of Imaan. Everyone attends his wedding as Pooja finally arrives. She's no longer the same girl she was back then, as she is much more mature now and not as tomboyish as she was back then. Over sometime, Shaam has come to realize he missed Pooja's presences and is much fond of her now. He realized he had failed to appreciate her presence. The day after Imaan's wedding, Pooja leaves to catch her flight back to USA. Right before her departure, she decides to pass Shaam the Valentine's Day card she had wanted to hand him during their college days and revealed her love for him. Shaam realizes that Pooja is the one that was meant to be for him but not Priya. The movie ends with Shaam accepting Pooja's love for him.

Cast

• Shaam as Shaam
• Arya as Imaan
• Laila as Pooja
• Pooja as Irene
• Asin as Priya
• Murali as Pooja's father
• Rajiv Choudhry as Irene's father
• KPAC Lalitha as Imaan’s mother
• Raju Sundaram as Raju
• Srinath as Pathchu

Production

The film was first reported in April 2002, where it was revealed that Shaam and Richa Pallod were going to team up with director Jeeva, who had launched Shaam in the critically acclaimed 12B, for a college love story titled Pepsi.^[1][2] The title Pepsi had stemmed from the first letter from the names of the five friends — Priya, Emaan, Pooja, Shyam and Irene. The film was later renamed and the film took the brand Pepsi's tagline in South India - Ullam Ketkumae - as the new title. Asin signed the film aged eighteen and the film was meant to mark her début in Tamil films, but the delay meant that M. Kumaran son of Mahalakshmi released almost a year before this one.^[3] While working as a software engineer, Arya was approached by Jeeva to audition for the film in 2003 as the pair had lived in the same neighbourhood and had attended the same local mosque. Arya immediately signed on for the project and was given the stage name of Arya for the film by Jeeva.^[4] Pooja was also signed on to make her début and play Irene in the film, although the film's delay meant that several of her other films released before Ullam Ketkumae hit the screens.^[5]

Art director Thotta Tharani created a college campus for the film to be shot in, with his work drawing appreciation.^[6] A scene featuring an inter college day cultural had 100 students from various states take part in the shooting while decorations and a podium were put up for a marriage scene in Taj Connemara hotel.^[7] Raju Sundaram choreographed five songs including a song shot at hot water springs in New Zealand.^[8]

The film went through production hell, with three years being spent on the announcement till release.^[9] The delay also led to the actors featuring in other projects during the period and Jeeva moving on to direct a Hindi film, Run. Despite giving indications that the film would release after delays on 14 April 2004 it was further pushed back due to financial issues.^[10] In May 2005, the Supreme Court finally cleared the decks for the release, as earlier the Madras High court by a 25 February order appointed "Joint Receivers" for the film, which was objected by Prasad Labs who had gone to Supreme Court. It was agreed that the collections from the film will be received by "joint receivers" who will pay Prasad Labs for 72 prints of the film.^[11] The film subsequently opened in Tamil Nadu on 3 June 2005.

Release

The film released on 3 June 2005 and became a commercial success at the box office with pundits describing the film as a "sleeper hit". The film took a 90 percent opening in four Chennai screens with large collections reported at the Devi theatre in Chennai in the opening weekend.^[12] The film surprisingly opened at number two at the Chennai box office despite competition, just below the Rajinikanth starrer Chandramukhi.^[13]

A critic from nowrunning.com labelled that "Ullam Ketkumae is worth seeing as it has a certain truth and universality to it", claiming that "Shyam and Laila give an impressive performance" and that Jeeva has "remarkably caught the college atmosphere, and the underlying passion, love and friendship".^[14] The success of the film brought a series of offers for Shaam, whose career was struggling prior to release, whilst Arya and Asin were able to consolidate their positions of rising actors.^[15][16][17] The success of the film later prompted a dubbed Telugu version being released on 30 March 2006 as Preminchi Choodu.^[18]

Music

The music and background score were composed by Harris Jayaraj. Lyrics were written by Vairamuthu.(exceptions are noted)and Pa Vijay.

References

External links

• Ullam Ketkumae on IMDb