Telugu commercial cinema is changing a bit and giving more meat to glam divas in their movies. Going by the roles played by Anushka Shetty, Kajal Aggarwal, Tamannaah and Samantha who played professionals onscreen besides doing dance numbers with heroes. If Anushka Shetty played a celebrity chef in ‘Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty’, Kajal essayed the role of a psychologist in ‘Bhagavanath Kesari’.
Earlier, Samantha was seen as an IT professional in ‘Kushi’ and glam girl Tamannah Bhatia played a lawyer in Calcutta High Court in ‘Bhola Shankar. “Giving professional identity to actresses is a welcome change in Tollywood,” says famed writer Gopi Mohan, who cites the example of yesteryear hit ‘Anthuleni Kadha’.
“Jayapradha was shown as a strong working woman who overcomes many hurdles to score high in her professional and personal lives. She erased all misconceptions about working women in real-life and brought respect and dignity to them in the 70's,” he adds.
He also pats top actresses like Anushka Shetty, Samantha, Kajal Aggarwal for preferring roles with substance. “If big names play working women on screen, it is bound to impact the young generation audience and gain respect for working girls. Now-a-days, more educated people are turning up in theatres due to sprawling multiplexes and any match to their work in real-life, connects them better to the film. While many Bollywood actresses have tasted success in portraying different professions on screen, we need more of it in Tollywood too,” he says.
Gopi Mohan likes to bifurcate audiences as urban and rural and claims that films were made to cater to them. “Earlier, we had only three cities like Vijayawada, Vizag and Hyderabad and the rest were considered rural zones. So entertainment movies loaded with songs and fights were served to them since they used to come to movies for some ‘relief’ from their daily work. However, with multiplexes growing rapidly, more literate audiences are thronging theatres, making filmmakers add more sensibilities and better characterizations to raise the bar on Telugu cinema,” he points out.
However, he says that these characters with professional identity have to be given more screen space in the film to strike a balance in the script, rather than just being hero-centric.
“It all depends on the story. If you are writing a hero-driven film, the story is bound to bias. I think we writers have to find the right balance in commercial movies,” he concludes.
Summing up the changing trend, actress Nandita Swetha who played a police officer in ‘Hidimbha’ and also getting equal footage in the film, says, ”Playing a professional onscreen gives a fillip to glam girls as it shows them in a new light. Of course, romance with a hero is part of commercial films, but heroines should have a task to accomplish. With more heroines doing roles with substance, things are bound to change in the days to come,” she explains.
