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Story
Revanth (Naga Chaitanya) is brought up by his mother. He is from a village where the people belonging to the lower castes are treated with disdain, He comes to Hyderabad and starts a Zumba classes center in a penthouse. Mounika (Sai Pallavi) comes to Hyderabad against the wishes of her family to find a job. She belongs to the upper caste and she fears her babai (Rajeev Kanakala) a lot. After looking at her dancing prowess, Revanth offers a job in his center. As they grow closer to each other, they realise that they belong to the same village. Rest of the story is all about how they defy all odds to unite.
Artists Performance
Naga Chaitanya is perfect as the self-made man. His character goes through a lot of pain and optimism. He has shown all those emotions with his expressions/dialogue-delivery. He has worked really well on the Telangana dialect and it's pretty good. His work in this film is several notches above his work in Majili (which was his earlier best). Sai Pallavi’s character is endearing and vulnerable. And she brought out all those emotions with consummate ease. And her Telangana dialect is admirable. Her dance in the first song is exceptionally good. Rajeev Kanakala plays the role of a villain in this film to perfection. This is probably the best character in his career. Uttej gets a vital character and delivers a natural performance. Eeswari Rao enlivens the role of the hero’s mother. All other characters are cast well (especially the character of the hero's assistant and the heroine’s friend).
Technical departments
Story - screenplay - direction: After Leader, here is a film in which Sekhar Kammula touches an issue other than love and family values. Though it’s essentially a love story, the conflict point is the caste/religion division. Sekhar Kammula deals with this issue very sensitively most of the time, and he is very direct about it in a few scenes. There is a physical/psychological issue to the heroine character in the film which he has connected very logically towards the end (good screenplay technique). He touches another burning social issue through this film (apart from caste/religion divide). Sekhar Kammula has a way of expressing love/romance in a poetic/endearing way. He has written dialogues and scenes for the heroine character in such a way that we fall in love with her character. Hero characters in Sekhar Kammula’s films don't have any internal struggles. For the first time, Sekhar Kammula writes an equally important male protagonist role in Love Story. The hero character exudes hope and positivity when confronted with a problem, and the heroine character goes through depression when in trouble (due to her internal conflict and past experiences). These two characters falling in love and helping themselves represent organic writing and create interest. Though he has done it properly for most of the first half and half of the second half, the latter part takes an unexpected turn. The flow of the story becomes abrupt, hurried and little forced. Though the two social issues are conveyed, a better pre-climax and climax would have helped the film in conveying in a more powerful manner. The 3-hour duration of the film is another minus along with the slow narration.
Other departments: Songs and background music by Pawan Ch is the highlight of the film among the technical departments. All songs are good. Background music helps in enhancing the emotions/mood of the scenes. The audiences who loved the youtube song of Saranga Dariya are in for a little disappointment (unlike Vachinde song from Fidaa) as you can’t completely enjoy the song as it comes in a tense moment of the film and is edited in a way to accommodate story-related scenes in between. Cinematography by Vijay C Kumar is nice. Dialogues written by Sekhar Kammula are excellent. The dialogues written to the hero are full of optimism/positivity and the dialogues written to the heroine are fun in some parts and deep in some other parts. Editing is fine for most of the film, but for the last 20 minutes where it's hurried. Production design by Bhaskar Katakamsetty is authentic. Production values by Sree Venkateswara Cinemas and Amigos Creations are good.
Analysis: Sekhar Kammula who has done lovable love stories so far has added a social angle to each of the characters in this film. These social issues which are less addressed in Telugu films form the conflict point and act as catalysts to fall in love with the characters. Naga Chaitanya, Sai Pallavi and Rajeev Kanakala give their best performance in this film. Sekhar Kammula addresses a couple of social issues without mincing any words. Plus points of the film are lead pair, characterizations, music, dialogues, social issues and Sekhar Kammula’s direction. On the flipside, the latter part of the film is inorganic and looks abrupt. The runtime is high, hence the second half appears dragged. On a whole, Love Story has the elements of Sekhar Kammula and Sai Pallavi along with two powerful social issues which are handled with maturity. It’s worth a watch!
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