TRIVANDRUM LODGE

          The team of ‘Beautiful’ has repeated their success through ‘Trivandrum Lodge’. Anoop Menon, Jayasurya and VKP (plus certain others who had been part of ‘Beautiful’) have done well in ‘Trivandrum Lodge’.

          Anoop Menon’s script is the backbone and the main feature of the movie. His works resemble those of the classic writer in Malayalam, i.e., Padmarajan (resemblance in the way that they both handle the subject ‘sex’ in a class of their own, without making it appear vulgar). Even Anoop had brought the character ‘Thangal’ (Played by Babu Namboothiri) of Padmarajan’s ‘Thoovana Thumpikal’ to ‘Trivandrum Lodge’. It seems like Anoop is trying to imitate Padmarajan.

          The story evolves through the life of different people living and related to ‘Trivandrum lodge’ in Kochi. The residents, its owner and certain other people coming in touch with the lodge form the characters of the story. The one thing the movie tries to discuss is the views of all these characters regarding sex. The concept of ‘male – female relationship’ (sex) is discussed through different perceptions in ‘Trivandrum Lodge’. Different levels, layers, types and views of male – female relationship have been expressed well in the movie.

          The dialogues were absolutely and perfectly framed to match the realistic situations. But at certain situations they seem to cross the limit of polity. Some dialogues were strictly adults only (though they can’t be avoided from the script).

          Though it was Anoop Menon who had written the movie, ‘Trivandrum Lodge’, being directed by V.K. Prakash (VKP, the director of ‘Gulumal’, ‘Three Kings’ etc) was foreseen with a hesitation to accept. But Anoop’s script and the team of ‘Beautiful’ have done ‘Trivandrum Lodge’ very well blowing away all the hesitations.

          All the characters seem to be interested only in sex. An exception is ‘Ravisankar’ (played by Anoop Menon) who says he is a one–woman man. Abdu (played by Jayasurya) is an insensitive character who is deprived of all his confidence. Jayasurya has done the role really well. Honey rose and famous playback singer P. Jayachandran have also played in lead roles in the movie very well.

          Dealing with the subject ‘sex’ within a movie need to be very carefully done, else, it will look like nothing short of an adults-only movie. But the script explains the subject really well without any vulgarity.

          The music department of the movie has done well. The result was good songs (composed by M. Jayachandran) and excellent background score (composed by Bijibal).

          ‘Trivandrum Lodge’ is thus, a good movie Malayalam film industry had given, with more to expect from Anoop Menon.