She hates Krishna because…he got into an accident? Vijay himself seems to understand that he has no convincing plot and there is no point to dwell on it. Nandini, for example, hates dance because she hates Krishna (Prabhudheva). While his clues are very easy to crack, what really puzzles us is the logical gaps in them. He throws hints at us and asks us to take a guess. Vijay doesn’t really explain everything for the audience. How come? The director doesn’t really try to explain it for he knows that would sound very foolish.

Why? Because she holds the art of dance responsible for her lost love. Her mother Nandini (Aishwarya Rajesh) is against letting her pursue her passion. Lakshmi (Ditya Bhande) was born a dancer so much so that she busts into a dance hearing a mobile ringtone.

And he has been more clever in picking the cast, which is made up of mainly adorable and supremely talented children. Just to ensure that the audience doesn’t leave the auditorium at the halftime, he has cleverly written the story around children. Or the vested interests planning an accident to prevent the protagonist from taking part in the finals.ĭirector AL Vijay’s dance film Lakshmi falls into the same trap. It is as if the filmmakers don’t know how to make a dance film anymore without tropes like a top dance competition. The filmmakers presume that the audience will be magnanimous enough to overlook the absence of an engaging story and screenplay as long as the films have a slew of good dance performances. Films like Raghava Lawrence’s Style, which is loud and unintelligent, and ABCD series, which are flashy and melodramatic, make for dance films these days. Influenced by Hollywood Step Up series, we have had a series of modern-day dance films that were mostly devoid of meaningful plot or real emotions. In the 21st century, we are yet to see a meaningful dance film like Salangai Oli.

But, mainly because the film had a very strong and hard-hitting plot which was handled by veteran director K Viswanath with the skill of a remarkable tragedian. It is the best dance drama not just because of the terrific performances of its star cast and the well-choreographed classical dance pieces. If you ask me which is India’s best dance film, without a moment’s hesitation I’d say Kamal Haasan’s Salangai Oli (Sagara Sangamam in Telugu).

Lakshmi tamil movie cast