Actor-filmmaker Pari Elavazhagan's sophomore film has been titled Anbe Diana. The makers dropped the first look of the film on Wednesday. Love in the time of chaos and schism seems to be the theme he is flirting with in the upcoming film. "The very nature of love is that 'opposites attract each other'. Right now, even love is being carefully planned and calculated like an arranged wedding. In Jama, hurdles are thrown at the male and female leads over the male protagonist's profession and his effeminate nature, whereas Anbe Diana speaks about the chaotic love story between a Telugu boy in Perambur and an Anglo Indian girl." Pari reveals.
He further explains that this recurrent theme helps in the organic narrative flow. "The contrast in their backgrounds and culture itself made my job easy as a writer; the hindrances such relationships would face are readily there." Pari, describing Anbe Diana as a fun-filled family entertainer, says that it was a conscious decision to make the film his second despite this being a 'safe bet' and Jama not being one. "If I made Anbe Diana first and Jama later, producers wouldn't have believed I could pull off Jama. Since I was also keen on showcasing myself as an actor, if I star in the tough therukoothu role in my very first film, it would be easy to convince that I can headline Anbe Diana."
He adds a caveat that though the challenges are relatively higher in Jama when compared to Anbe Diana, it is not to say that he could breeze through his role in the latest film. "With Jama, I had to train my expressions similar to an expert therukoothu artist and should not look as though I am just trying. In Anbe Diana, the task was to bring the unique Perambur subculture to life on screen. From mastering the Telugu dialect specific to the people living in Chennai to capturing the Anglo-Indian culture with precision, the challenge in Anbe Diana was collective and not character-specific like in Jama." Pari, who proved his mettle as writer, director and actor in his very first film, calls writing his first love and denies that he will be kinder to the roles he writes for himself. "I research and write a lot. Truth be told, I realised my character Kalyanam in Jama was too heavy for me to carry only after I wrote it. I trained myself hard to suit the role and did not make any concessions in the writing."
Even though he describes Anbe Diana as a 'fun-filled family commercial entertainer', he doesn't subscribe to the prevalent definition of that term. "I grew up watching films of Bhagyaraj sir and V Sekar sir. They are high on entertainment value, but those are also replete with logic and a lot of takeaways. Superficially speaking, they made comedy films. But they also captured milieus and everyday realities. I have made Anbe Diana to be in that league. When I say 'commercial entertainer,' it is not an escape for a film devoid of logic," he signs off.