| Director:
Vasanth |
 |
|
Cast: Prithviraj, Padmapriya, Nitin Sathya, Nasser, T R
Venkatraghavan |
|
Genre: Thriller |
 A psychological thriller
centered on three main characters, Satham Podaathey begins
interestingly. It breezes fairly engagingly through the earlier
part, with the director steadily building up the suspense
element - till the point where Ratnavel, the antagonist, plans
his cat and mouse game with his two victims, his former wife and
her husband. But in the crucial scenes towards the later part,
where the terror and the fear factor are depicted, the film
fails to touch a chord.
The three players here are
Ratnavel , who hides the fact of his impotency and marries Bhanu.
Bhanu, who discovers her husband's duplicity, and realising that
there was more to him than met the eye, divorces him. And.Ravi ,
her brother's buddy, who breaks through her defences and marries
her. But the duo hadn't reckoned with Ratnavel, who makes a
macabre plan to hit back at them.
Prithviraj's charm and the natural ease with which he
handles his role, Padmapriya's abiltity to fit into any
character with conviction and strike a rapport with her
co-actors, and Vasanth's light touches, makes for some enagaging
viewing in the earlier part.
In
playing Ratnavel, Nitin Satya reveals his potential as an actor
of calibre. This despite the character not being as well formed
as Bhanu's and Ravi's. Passing Ratnavel off as a psycho is the
easiest way to capsule his character. But the ambiguity remains,
and it's this which robs it of a clear motivation for Ratnavel's
behaviour.
The result is that Ratnavel
could neither generate any empathy for himself nor justify his
actions, or evoke any real terror when he indulges in abuse and
violence against Bhanu in his deserted farm house.
Padmapriya's peformance, no
doubt, is captivating in these scenes.
 There are shades of the
director's earlier film 'Asai', in the scenes where Ravi uses
his instinct and logic and identifies Ratnavel, his new found
friend, as the culprit behind some unsavoury acts against him:
the way Ajit had exposed Prakashraj in the earlier film.
While the song picturisation
are catchy, the one shot on Ratnavel seems irrelevant and
distracting.
It's a commendable effort from
Vasanth to give a psychological thriller. If only he had taken a
little more care in the etching of his antagonist, and in
structuring the later half of the film.
Malini Mannath
|
