'''Mouna Ragam'''


aka Silent Raga
1986 145’ col Tamil
d/s Mani Rathnam pc Sujatha Prod.
p G. Venkateswaran lyr Vali c P.C. Sriram
m Ilaiyaraja
lp Mohan, Revathi, Karthik, Kanchana, Vani,
Kamala Kamesh, Kalaichelvi, Shakila, Sonia,
V.K. Ramaswamy, R. Shankaran, Bhaskar, Rani
Patel, Suresh 


Rathnam’s art-house melodrama just prior to
his big-budget breakthrough hit Nayakan
(1987). Divya (Revathi) is unable to resign
herself to a forced marriage living in Delhi with
Chandra Kumar (Mohan). She recalls, in
flashback, her carefree days with her first
boyfriend, the gansgter Manmohan (Karthik),
who was shot dead in front of a temple even as
she waited inside to marry him. She seeks a
divorce, but as the law requires the couple to
stay together for a year, they decide to live
separately in the same house. After she has
nursed her husband back to health following a
murderous attack by an employee, the couple
decide to stay together. The film inaugurates
the Tamil love story genre set outside the state,
associated with the director (cf. Roja, 1992),
also featuring camerawork typically associated
with Rathnam and Sriram: frontal and profile
close-ups, set against long shots with fuzzy
foreground. Not to be confused with Ambili’s
Malayalam Mouna Ragam (1983).

[[Film]]