Love bites on the Tolly screen

doweshowbellyad=0; Jisshu in a still from Bor Ashbe Ekhuni. (TOI Photo)Jab the movie buffs met with Geet and Aditya in Imtiaz Ali���s Jab We Met, they fell in ���love��� with them. So much so, that the flick went on to become a BO hit.
Another ���thoda hatke��� love story had cast its romantic spell on the audience. In fact, with films like Namastey London, Salaam Namaste, Salaam E Ishq, Bollywood���s Dor with ishq, mohabbat, pyar had started moving away from the cliches.But what���s it with Tollywood? Is it ready to explore the myriad hues of love and tease the viewers to explore layers of intensity in a relationship, which could oscillate between experiencing emotions like loss, longing and lust?
With the Bengali film audience in love with his I Love You and his Premer Kahini turning out to be a delectable sizzler, director Ravi Kinnagi is optimistic about Tollywood���s future in churning out love stories. ���The basic concept remains the same, but there has been considerable changes in presentation,��� says Kinnagi. Yet, this presentation also needs to be done with utmost caution. Reasons director, Rangan Chakraborty, who will be making his Tollywood foray with Bor Ashbe Ekhuni, ���There���s no guarantee that the audience will say kudos to a change in narrative style. Basically, a love story has to do with the boy meeting a girl, a lover���s tiff and the coming together of the two. But then again, too much of experimentation might not get takers all the time.��� The reason being that Bengalis have still not freed themselves from a certain shackle of conservatism. ���And that���s exactly why a Jab We Met is not entering the Bangla market,��� opines Chakraborty while adding that the target audience for commercial Bengali cinema is different. ���Capitalism might have developed a global audience but Kolkata still remains untouched,��� feels the director.
For the few who dare to usher in change, the easiest way is to experiment with newcomers. ���Fresh faces have no image attached. Naturally, the GenY can relate to them. With a glossy appeal, our endeavour should be to pull the multiplex audience to the theatres,��� says NK Salil, who has done the script of Premer Kahini where Barsha, the female lead, falls for Akash just days ahead of her marriage. Salil is busy working on his next, a teenage love story wherein the love develops through a crisis in the course of a journey. In fact, Dev, who is supposed to feature in this film, agrees that the film could be on the lines of JWM.
Another director Riingo, whose Love is ready for release, notes that contentwise, the treatment of subjects is changing. ���
The Bengali filmdom has always been governed by the flavours of the season. After its dose of dishoom dishoom and laugh riots, it���s now back to the mush Sathi days. Interestingly, various kinds of love stories are now in the offing in terms of content and packaging,��� says Riingo whose latest release delves more into the emotional detailings that one experiences in love and how a person deals with loss in love. ���My protagonists are the soul of my film. It���s through them that I portray the various shades of emotional highs and lows that come along with the experience of longing for and losing someone one has loved deeply,��� he adds. If such be the attempts, is it too far for Tollywood then to do a mauja hi mauja with ���love���ly flicks?