PremiumExclusive! I invested 3 years on a film that finally did not get made, says Parvati Nair
Parvati has not had a major release in four years, and while the pandemic is responsible for some of the slow down, the fact that films she signed up for didn’t take off also contributed
Last Updated: 10.02 PM, Jan 10, 2024
Parvati Nair has not had a full-fledged release in a while. There’ve been the occasional cameo appearance, but as a leading character, it’s been four years or so. This delay, she says, is down to multiple reasons. She had relocated to Chennai a few years when it seemed that a handful of projects were set to happen in Tamil cinema. But shortly after she moved to Chennai, the pandemic struck, and one of the films that she’d been working on at the time, Aalambana, is getting a theatrical release only now
“There were two other projects back then, one of which had an official launch, but then the shoot didn’t happen, while another was a bigger movie, for which I was asked to keep myself free without other commitments. This was a movie with Sivakarthikeyan, in which I would have been the solo heroine. In every sense, that would have been a great movie to do, so, I declined other offers that came my way, while I waited for this to take off. Eventually, this project got stalled altogether and the time I invested on it, came to nought. I literally waited three years for a film that did not happen,” she tells us. But why did she wait so long for this film? “For an actress, being a part of a major production is a big thing. A small film has to do really well to get you recognition, but with a big movie, even if it fails at the box office, you will still get mileage out of it,” says Parvati, who is currently working on Thalapathy Vijay’s next, The Greatest of All Time.
Parvati did, however, manage to squeeze in a female-centric film called Un Paarvaiyil, which is the Tamil remake of the Spanish film Julia’s Eyes. “While I was waiting for the Sivakarthikeyan film, I was offered Un Paarvaiyil; they were okay with me doing a female-centric film, as long as I wasn’t being seen with any other hero before their movie comes out. The Hindi, Bengali and Marathi versions of this film have already come out and only Tamil and Telugu are pending. The Telugu version has Sunil in it, and he is currently very popular owing to his roles in Pushpa and Jailer, so the makers may release that one first and then Un Paarvaiyil. The team is looking at doing theatrical releases for both versions,” she says. This uncertainty about if and when it will come out, though, is quite unnerving, she adds. Un Paarvaiyil, says Parvati, is a great film for OTT. “I’m not sure about its chances in theatres. Female-oriented films have not really worked in movie halls in a long time, most of which had very urban stories. Rooted, village-based stories may still work with a female lead,” she signs off.