‪‪Aruvi‬, ‪Aditi Balan‬, ‪Arun Prabhu‬, ‪Tamil cinema‬‬

Aruvi movie review: An absolute must watch!

Producers Prakash and Prabhu of Dream Warrior Pictures who have the great knack of selecting great scripts and young talents are at the bankrolling of a unique film. Helmed by debutant Arun Prabhu Purushothaman and a super confident newcomer Aditi Balan essaying the titular character, Aruvi is an exemplary work from the former that has already got critical critics and international film fest circuits at a few awards.

The movie starts on a stormy night with an inquiry from a terrorist Aruvi (Aditi Balan) by a cop Shakeel Wahab (Mohammad Ali Baig) from the anti-terrorism wing. And everybody associated with Aruvi are grilled and they are revealed. Aruvi is a metaphor here on how our pure protagonist gets unhinged and polluted as she flows across different places.

Aruvi has a loving family comprising of her doting dad, mom and kid brother in a small town. The family shifts to the city and aruvi grow up as a charming innocent girl. All goes well until one day, she meets with an accident and things turn topsy-turvy. Suddenly, her father starts hating her and the family throws her out of the house. The homeless Aruvi befriends a kindhearted transgender Emily (Anjali Varadhan). Although Aruvi wants to be normal in society, the community will not allow it. Three men misuse her loneliness to their favor and when she retaliates by exposing her true colors, she resolves to open up a TV reality show Solvedhellam Sathyam hosted by actress Shoba Parthasarathy (Lakshmi Gopalswamy). Things now take an unexpected turn with the rest of the story narrated in a riveting manner.

Arun had undoubtedly chosen Aditi Balan after auditioning more than 500 girls to portray Aruvi - a complex character and a face that should bring out a gamut of emotions. She owns the film with her winsome performance. Transgender Anjali Varadhan is still another revelation, so is also Lakshmi Gopalaswamy The rest like Kavitha Bharathy as the reality show director, Pradeep Antony as the assistant director, Shwetha Shekar as Aruvi's friend, the boy who serves tea, and the father too chip in with notable performances.

The studio portions are a bit stretched. Neither are they available on an otherwise serious story At the same time, the director also reveals the ugly face of reality shows and what they do to increase the TRPs. Arun has handled the subject with a lot of sensitivity and conviction. His grip over the medium is evident as there is a dull moment in the entire proceedings.

Technically, he is aided by the superb cinematography of Shelley Calise and fabulous music by Bindu Malini and Vedhant Bharadwaj. Editing by Raymond Derrick Crasta is equally good


Aruvi is a must watch a movie. Go and explore the pleasure of drenching in this waterfall - you will never feel like coming out of it!