Alaipayuthey

Alaipayuthey (2000)

அலைபாயுதே

Karthik and Shakthi marry against the wishes of their families and start their new life. However, they soon realize that marriage is not the bed of roses they had imagined it would be.

Date of release
2000-04-14
TMDB
7.4 / 10 (50)
Runtime
2h 36m
Genres
Romance, Drama
Director
Mani Ratnam

Casting

Interesting facts

Alaipayuthey, also spelled as Alai Payuthey, is a 2000 Indian Tamil-language romantic musical film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Mani Ratnam, starring R. Madhavan and Shalini. The film explores the tensions of married life between two young people who elope and the maturing of love among urban Indians who are conflicted between tradition and modernity. The score and soundtrack were composed by A. R. Rahman.

Production

Mani Ratnam opted to make a romantic film with relative newcomers after his 1998 Hindi film Dil Se.. and signed on small screen actor R. Madhavan to make his acting debut in Tamil films. Madhavan had done a sandalwood talc ad for Santosh Sivan in 1996 and the veteran cinematographer gave photographs of the actor to Mani Ratnam during the casting process of Iruvar.

Mani Ratnam initially wanted to cast a debutant in the lead female role as well and carried out a screen test with Vasundhara Das, before signing on Shalini to play the role in the film in April 1999.

Swarnamalya was selected to play the role of Poorni after the director spotted her on a television show and subsequently asked her to screen test for the film. The actress appeared without make-up in the film and also dubbed her own lines. Theatre actor, Karthik Kumar of Evam, also marked his film debut with a minor supporting role as a potential suitor to Shakti.

The film also required two leading actors to appear in supporting roles with Khushbu chosen to do a role. After considering either Shah Rukh Khan, Mammootty, or Mohanlal, Mani Ratnam signed Arvind Swamy to play another role, with Alai Payuthey becoming the pair's fourth production together. P. C.

The film began without an official launch, like other Mani Ratnam projects, and it was initially expected that filming would be wrapped up in under four months. During the first seven days of the shoot, Mani Ratnam filmed portions featuring Shalini and made Madhavan stay on the sets and watch his process of film-making. The first scene the actor shot was the post-interval scene featuring Shakthi's mother played by Jayasudha.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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