India Uncut

... began with the white-shirt cliche, writes G Babu Jayakumar in NewIndPress. The film was Avalude Raavugal (Her Nights), and the heroine gets drenched in the rain, so the hero lends her, what else, a white shirt to change into. (In my film, she'd escape from the bathroom ventilator while pretending to change and then sell the expensive Versace shirt for 50 k in the black market to fund her fetish for toy ducks.)

From the white shirt, we move to another cliche, "the story of an adolescent’s sexual obsession with an older woman and his subsequent triumph during a summer vacation," and then to the formula where "female characters had the penchant to keep themselves clean by constantly bathing, draped in white towels, while the male characters indulged in voyeurism." Jayakumar takes us to where "Shakeela arrived on the scene along with a band of nymphets to sizzle the screens," and informs us that "in 2001, 57 of the 89 films made in Kerala were of the sizzling kind." Read the full piece here.

I must confess here with deep distress that I haven't seen a single Mallu porn film. I suppose I might thus be considered to be inadequate as a man, or at least an Indian one. Sigh.

Update (July 10): Happy-Go-Lucky writes in:

Its sad that you mentioned Avalude Raavukal as the beginning of South Indian Porn. The movie is a critically acclaimed classic and portrays sex in a highly aesthetic manner. It's another matter that the sex-starved youth savoured it the way they liked, art be damned.

And the other cliche that you mentioned, "the story of an adolescent's sexual obsession with an older woman and his subsequent triumph during a summer vacation," the movie in question, Rathi Nirvedham, handles the subject in a mature way. It's a must-watch if you consider cinema as a form of art. The film-maker, Bharathan, was one of country's finest film-makers.

Many other movies on this cliche have been made in the Porn industry, all of them vulgar and full of sleaze. In my opinion, Porn movies are not part of the film industry, they are part of the sex industry. Made on shoe-string budgets (location = hotel room), these movies run as noon shows in certain theatres across Kerala. And dubbed in other languages, they run in the rest of the country. To some extent, these have eaten into the share of C grade bollywood porn industry. In a way, it's a back-hand compliment to the entrepreneurial mallu.

Update 2 (July 10): aNTi writes in:

As Happy Go Lucky states, Avalude Ravugal was indeed a "classic". But it was not Bharathan who made it. The movie was directed by one of Malayalam's (actually South India's) most prolific and sometimes critically acclaimed directors from the 70s and the 80s - IV Sasi. It is also interesting to note that Seema, the "Aval" (she in Malayalam) behind the "Avalude" in the title, was one of his favorite muses and later his wife too.

His IMDB page links him to a couple of Hindi movies as well. He has won a couple of National Awards, just like every other hot shot mallu director, but is also infamous for probably the only soft porn movie starring Sridevi called Pagalil Oru Nilavu!

Sridevi did soft porn? Jeez, so her career could be described as "From Boner to Boney..."

Update (July 11): Prabhu writes in:

There is a famous song 'iLamai enum poongatru' in the movie which aNTi had mentioned. The lyrics are very sensual. And Sridevi is clad in a micro mini skirt. The color of her dress is white with black dots on it! A la Dalmatian. But no, there isnt any doggy style sequence!

I love the detail!