Soothradharan

Language: Malayalam
Hero: Dileep
Director: Lohithadas
Music: Ravindran
Lyrics: S. Ramesan Nair

Her debut movie. The film lost, but she gained. Not many actresses whose first film flopped has gained such a fame. It told a different story. Like all other films by Lohithadas it was realistic too. But the public refused to accept it. There were too many reasons for it. The hero was Dileep, but the storyline was really serious. All the Dileep movies which came before and after soothradharan were comedy based. So this one too, repeated the fate of all the serious Dileep movies. Even though Lohi tried to put some comedy into the script, it didn't work just because that cap doesn't fit him. Another reason was that the story appeared to be some what dirty for the family audience to watch. (The fact is that there is nothing unreal in the story, but mallu audience often rejects such stories.)

The film said the story of group of ’devadasis’. It happens in a border village of Karnataka (But the film was actually shot at pollachi and thenkasi.). Name of village is Pandavapuram. In the village there are some ’devadasis’ who have to prostitute inorder to earn there living. Our heroine 'Sivani' was brought up by these ’devadasis’. She was an innocent girl and her guardians never exposed her to the outside world. She was beautiful and she describes herself all the time as "Sundarikkutty" (Yes, ofcourse it is true). A devadasi named Rani was incharge of Sivani. Rani taught her all the lessons of life. Rani was always insisting that Sivani should never have to do their business. But the devadasis were very poor. Then comes our hero Ramesan who happen to get into the cottage of the devadasis. He met Sivani and she liked him. They appointed Ramesan as their doctor. Then it happened that due to their financial crisis they decided to put Sivani into prostitution. She was an innocent girl and didn't know about the trap. Thus Ramesan had to rescue her from the enemies. Thus he had to take the role of a Soothradharan. Thus goes the story.

Meera acted very well in this film, even with the lack of any past experience in acting. It seems difficult for someone to believe that it was her first film. In addition to acting she dubbed the film too. (She dubs all her films in Malayalam. She believes that acting makes only 50% and dubbing makes it 100%. It is absolutely correct. Her greatest plus point is her willingness to dub all her films and make them perfect. It was a problem to her when she started in Tamil because she just doesn't know Tamil. But she is starting to dub in Tamil from the Maniratnam's movie. (This particular movie by Maniratnam, actually does not have any dubbing sessions at all, but it involves synchronous recording which records the sound at the same time of acting. This technology is from Hollywood. It was also implemented in some films at Bollywood. It was also used in Mohanlal's big budget art film 'Vanaprastham'. Its for the second time in Tamil film after Kamal's "Hey Ram".)).

Even though Soothradharan was a flop she gained a wide recognition. She also got a lot many fans just after her first film. But she was not recognized by mallu film industry. And she even lost some of her films such as 'Nandanam' by Ranjith and 'Kai ethum doorathu' by Fazil. Thus she had to slip into Tamil film industry.