It's a young line-up comprising the likes of Sudhakar Komakula, the Sekhar Kammula find in Life Is Beautiful , a one-film old Sudheer Verma and Chandini Chowdhary, that's leading the honours for Kundanapu Bomma , the Telugu film directed by Vara Mullapudi and produced by G Anil. Makers promise it is a sweet little love triangle that unfolds in a village amidst waters, fields and large families.
Shot in and around Bobbili, significantly in the Rajamahal for a little over a month, they bonded quite easily during the shoot and agree that the experience has been a paid holiday.
The residents, some of them playing junior artistes in the film, showed great hospitality to the filmmakers too. Despite working late in the nights, with the first day shoot being on top of a rock under heavy sunlight in February and assembling at 7 am in the mornings, they don’t have much to complain. The opportunity to work hard has come at the right time in their careers, they feel.
Among the three, Sudhakar and Chandini open up rather easily. while Sudheer takes a while to catch up and shed his nervousness, which he does considerably well as he says " Aakali unna vallu tindi taste eppudu chudarandi .(those who are hungry don’t think of taste) In that sense, we were served a biryani. In such a positive atmosphere where a director says, ‘’I know it’s tough to push yourself and calms you to perform, you deliver nothing but your best.”
The other two surprise us with tales about their shoot. “Imagine unlike his on-screen image, Nagineedu sir, who has a lot of young friends on sets, was the one to play the most pranks, catching us by surprise. He keeps a serious face and yet cracks the funniest of jokes,” Sudhakar shares.
In a rare combination of Telugu speaking actors who speak the language the way it should be, they share a connection of being brought up in Visakhapatnam and found inspiration among all ages on the sets including K Raghavendra Rao (presenter), M M Keeravani in the background, with Nagineedu, Rajeev Kanakala and a series of child artistes among the cast, making the shoot a fun ride.
“You’re obviously stunned if a nine-year old girl, barely two days into her shoot, calls for a retake after not being satisfied with a shot,” Chandini clarifies. She, the eponymous heroine of the film, is particularly in awe of the song she shot for a small ghazal in the film, ‘Chaitra Maasa’, a recreated K V Mahadevan musical coupled with Arudra’s lyric in S.P. Balasubramanyam’s voice.
Sudhakar interrupts here, “The word meaty is a fitting word to describe her part in the film.” The actress, a padaharanala Telugammayi herself, with a nod adds, “It’s a village-based character I’ve fallen in love with and she has an identity as a self-assured woman, who wouldn’t compromise on her stance.”
The male actors have been part of films with an ensemble cast in the past too with Second Hand and Life is Beautiful.
So were the two male actors playing characters that are modelled on Tom and Jerry here, Second HandLife is Beautiful conscious of eating up into each other’s screen-space? Aware of their roles while they were narrated the script, Sudheer and Sudhakar go onto share a similar school of thought: “It’s good to actually see where you stand before carrying a film on your own shoulders. As budding actors, we cannot afford to be very choosy as well.”
With the Bapu-Ramana flavour to the story, the Raghavendra Rao-Keeravani combo for guidance, Kundanapu Bomma , they know is in the right hands, as it readies for a mid-September release.
