Vaanam Vasappadum

<p>Karthik, a young lawyer, falls in love with Poongothai, the daughter of a businessman. Poongothai’s father and sister run a and are imprisoned on false accusations. Karthik brings Poongothai to his parents and seeks permission from his mother and speech-impaired father. Karthik and Poongothai eventually get married after his parents’ consent. One day while travelling back home, their car breaks down, and they decide to board a bus. However, both of them miss each other while travelling in the bus, and Poongothai falls into the hands of a group of teenagers, who are projected as womanizers. In the event, Poongothai is raped by the group and is thrown out with her hands tied at the back. After the event, issues of how she faces the humiliation and gets justice for the act form the rest of the story. Despite escaping somewhere else, Poongothai wants to fight back the humiliation. An opposition lawyer in the support of womanizers humiliates Poongothai in the court with vulgar questions. Two of the boys are kept captive under Karthik’s family friend, a cop, to render poetic justice. The opposition lawyer appears to save the boys, but the boys, who have realised the error of their ways, push the lawyer. All three of them fall down to their deaths in the building’s basement, which is under construction. The film was based on a novel by , which in turn was inspired from a real-life incident. After having read the story before 10 years the film got released, Sreeram had a thought of directing it and “reserved” his rights for filming it in future. The film was initially launched with newcomers Gautham and Pooja, a former Miss Chennai announced as the lead pair. However, Sreeram replaced the pair with another pair of debutants Karthik Kumar and Poongothai Chandrahasan. Kumar replaced , who was dropped owing to his strong Hindi accent. was Sreeram’s third film as director and was the first motion picture in India to use . The film was showcased at the and the ninth in India. The film was launched in July 2002. The soundtrack and background score were composed by , who earlier worked with Sreeram in , and it was his posthumous project before his death. The lyrics were written by Kavivarman and Jayendra. When Mahesh was admitted in hospital for cancer, he composed all the songs there and sent them to Sriram through tape recorder which were recorded in studio by his assistant . The audio was launched at office at Chennai. was released theatrically in India on 23 April 2004. Malathi Rangarajan of wrote, “[Poongothai] is a clear let down … At least she could have worked on her expressions, particularly in the first half.” The review also noted that, the screenplay was not so impressive and could have made the original story more insightful. However, the soundtrack received positive response with the song “Uyirae” being much appreciated for its music and visual theme. wrote for , “Somewhere down the line, becomes a case of several powerful moments that don’t quite add up to a singularly powerful movie.” After six months, digital colour correction was added which further improved the visual quality of the picture and the film was re-released in November 2004.</p>