Age Of The Brawny Male Demigod

Film-maker Suman Kittur바카라�s 2016 hit Kiragoorina Gayyaligalu had come amidst an incipient revival of Kannada cinema and the film about the young wives of a village stood out for two reasons바카라�the story, a nugget from Kannada literature told engagingly, and its cast with no superstars. Of the roughly 200 films produced annually in Sandalwood, only a handful is actress-led, a recent example being the Sruthi Hariharan-starrer Nathicharami. Or, going even further back, Shraddha Srinath in the thriller U-Turn.

바카라�We need to have these kind of films coming back-to-back,바카라� says Kittur. Looking back, she says it was indeed a risk picking a story like Kiragoorina Gayyaligalu to make a film. 바카라�But we had gone ahead reasoning that if it clicked, it might embolden others too,바카라� she says. But that hasn바카라�t rea­lly happened. The lament is familiar, looping back into the economics of showbiz. And, while Bollywood actresses have created a market for themselves, it hasn바카라�t happened on that scale in the south yet.

It wasn바카라�t always so. Malashree, in the nineties, could pull off a film on her own and so could Arathi and Kalpana in the 1970s. 바카라�Quite unusually, Hindi has done a better job regarding women-oriented cinema than anybody else suddenly in the recent past,바카라� says film critic Srinivas Bhashyam. Malayalam matches it, he says, pointing to How Old Are You?, actress Manju Warrier바카라�s comeback film in 2014. Parvathy playing an Indian nurse in Iraq in Take Off or Nimisha Sajayan in Thondi Modallum Drikshakshiyum, both 2017, are other rec­ent meaty roles in Malayalam, although the ethos is still drenched in masculinism. But the range of genres that Hindi has experimented with is noteworthy, says Bhashyam.

Bangalore-based film journalist Jogi exp­lains why actress-led films are not very common now, unlike in the past. 바카라�Fewer women are going to cinema theatres. Even if they do, youngsters aren바카라�t going to watch Kannada films. They watch Hindi films because of their ­multi-cultural circle of friends,바카라� he says. Unlike commercial films, however, Kannada offbeat cinema has consistently churned out actress-led films. But these mostly do the festival circuits and rarely reach the average film-goi­ng audience.