Romance blooms along with coffee in Manu Warrier’s debut feature film.
A love story set in the lush coffee plantations of Coorg, where love blooms along with the coffee flowers. And you have a Kodava protagonist in a Hindi movie! Co-written by Mumbaikar from Kerala Manu Warrier and Bengaluru man Sharath Parvathavani, Coffee Bloom is an indie inspired by the scenic plantations of Coorg.
Manu, whose directorial debut is Coffee Bloom , wanted the location to be an important part of the narrative. “My co-writer Sharath, with whom I have worked on a short film earlier in the U.S., is from Bengaluru and it dawned on us when we were working on the script that Coorg is just one night away from Bengaluru. Our story required a contained setting. We visited Elephant Corridor (a homestay in Siddapura) owned by Viju and Nimmi Chengappa and they gave us a detailed account of life there and the phenomenon of coffee blooms. We realised this could be a key factor in our story and we reworked the script around it, and adapted the story to Coorg, so that it didn’t feel gimmicky.”
Manu admits that till he visited the Chengappas, his knowledge of Coorg was limited to photographs. “The first thing that occurred to me was that it was a visual delight.”
Manu, a scriptwriter, says he’s averse to showing violence and frustration on screen. “I’m driven to working on plot-oriented subjects.” So, the story traces the life of Dev Anand, a self-proclaimed wise man who finds comfort in being a loser, having given up on life as a result of a romance gone wrong. A life-changing event takes him on a journey to a coffee plantation in Coorg, where he meets Anika, his long-lost love, currently his boss. Love blooms in an idyllic setting; and much is at stake as the yearly bloom is round the corner.
Manu admits that he was lucky when he started out wanting to make this indie. He was introduced to Bollywood producer Harish Amin by filmmaker Leena Yadav, who loved the story. He also brought on board Bollywood actor Arjun Mathur, who has earlier starred in Luck by Chance, My Name is Khan, and Fireflies, and Sugandha Ram who was part of Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and My Name is Khan . The film also stars Mohan Kapoor and Ishwari Bose-Bhattacharya. Manu started writing the film in 2011 and shot it in February 2013. “The climax was dependent on nature. We had to chase the seasons to ensure continuity did not suffer.” Thus the film cost Rs. 1.5 crore to make, he admits. In 2014, it premiered at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. At the NFDC Film Bazaar, it was marked for ‘Market Recommendation’.
It was while he was studying for his MBA in U.S.A. that Manu seriously started getting engrossed in cinema. “I wanted to make films, but my middle-class upbringing frowned on filmmaking as a career. But, in the U.S., I had access to film libraries. I started reading, and started DIY filmmaking.” He worked in HR recruitment for a while, and then decided to come home. When he moved to Mumbai, he says he was naïve enough to believe that he would write scripts and films would be made out of them. “But reality doesn’t work like that. So I started pitching myself as a scriptwriter, and as someone who would develop people’s content for them.” Things started opening up, but projects were also frustratingly shelved midway.
Manu says he had been going back and forth with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap to collaborate on a script when another great opening came his way — “Anurag Kashyap suddenly called me late one night and said there is a writing project. He didn’t tell me any more details or who it involved. I think it was about being in the right place at the right time.” Manu landed a writing job, having been given the task to write the screenplay for four episodes of Yudh , the TV series starring Amitabh Bachchan, that Kashyap had created.
Talking of opportunities available now, and the possibilities of the indie film in Hindi cinema, Manu says there are people who make films on controversial subjects to get attention, and there are others putting up their films online.
“But whatever you do, struggle is a part of the picture. I was a rank outsider. And it’s never easy. But after a point, you just want to be part of the picture, whether it’s rosy or not. But the indie scene is surely changing for the better,” says the 36-year-old filmmaker.
Coffee Bloom releases in India, U.S. and Toronto simultaneously on March 6.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Bhumika K / March 03rd, 2015
