Alphonse Puthren’s 5 major revelations about Premam

Did Malar actually lose her memory or did she pretend to get rid of George? – This question has been plaguing a lot of fans ever since they watched Alphonse Puthren’s blockbuster Premam, which has Nivin Pauly, Sai Pallavi, Anupama Parameswaran and Madonna Sebastian as leads.

The elusive filmmaker, in an impromptu Q&A session on his Facebook page a few days ago, provided answers for this query along with several others, unravelling more layers of the characters since the film’s release in 2015.

Here are five revelations he made about Premam:

Malar regained her memory, albeit recently

The scene in the film that has confounded viewers was when Malar (Sai Pallavi) attends George’s wedding, years later. In reply to a question whether Malar really suffered a memory loss or had pretended this to avoid George, Alphonse said, “She had lost her memory. When she regained it, she might have spoken to Arivazhagan. When she reaches (George’s wedding), she feels George is happy with Celine. But ‘super’ George understands that she has regained her memory. This is not told in the dialogues. But I have showed this in action and the music, with the harmonica replacing the violin this time… She got her memory back recently.”

Asin was the first choice to play Malar

While it’s hard to imagine anyone but Sai Pallavi as Malar Miss from the movie, Alphonse revealed that the Tamil actress wasn’t his first choice. When asked his opinion about replacing Malar with a Malayalam-speaking actress, the director said, “In the beginning, when I wrote the script, the (dialogues) were in Malayalam. I wanted Asin to act as the Malayali version of Malar. The character was from Fort Kochi. I couldn’t contact Asin. Nivin had also tried. Then I gave up the idea and wrote it in Tamil.”

George was always a foodie

The latter half of the movie shows George running a bakery. A fan, however, asked how can this be justified because apart from the first few scenes where he gives instructions to his mother to prepare fish, no other scenes show his love for food. Alphonse had a different opinion. “George loves food. It is shown in a very subtle manner,” he wrote.

Celine is not Mary’s sister

In the first half and the throwback ice-cream scene, Mary and Celine are always shown together. This further fuelled the assumptions that the duo are sisters. However, Alphonse said, “Celine is not Mary’s sister. The subtitler got confused as he couldn’t find the right English term for ‘chechi’ and addressed Mary as sister in the subtitles. If Mary was Celine’s sister, wouldn’t I have shown Celine inside Mary’s house?”

The connection between Tron Legacy and Malar’s memory loss scene

Responding to a query whether he listens to a film score or album that he has heard before before writing or editing a scene, Alphonse revealed, “For Malar memory loss scene, I played a track from Tron: Legacy while shooting George walking out after Malar asks him his name. (This was done to) inspire all of them and for me to get inspired.”

The filmmaker’s next film Paattu, which has Fahadh Faasil and Nayanthara in the lead, will have plenty of music too as it is a musical and has Alphonse making his debut as a composer.