Chithram (
Picture) is a
1988 screwball
comedy film directed and written by
Priyadarshan. The film ran for 366 days in
regular shows and considered as the biggest hit ever in Malayalam
along with
Kilukkam (1991).
Plot
Kalyani (
Renjini) is the daughter of a wealthy
NRI Ramendra Menon (Poornam
Vishwanathan) who resides in the US
. Kalyani, brought up in Kerala
by her
father's friend Kaimal (Nedumudi
Venu), falls in love with another man and decides to marry
against the wishes of her father. When her boyfriend finds
out that she will be disinherited, he ditches her at the
altar.
After a short while her father decides to retract his disapproval
and spend a fortnight's vacation with his daughter and son-in-law
in his estate near a tribal community where Menon is the chief.
Because her father is already ill and because this may be his last
vacation, Kalyani and Kaimal want to make it as happy for him as
possible. They decide to conceal the fact that her boyfriend dumped
her.
Kaimal hires Vishnu (
Mohanlal) to play the
part of the husband for a fortnight. Meanwhile Kalyani's cousin
Baskaran Nambiar (
Sreenivasan) who is
the caretaker of the estate was expected to inherit Menon's esate
and property when Kalyani was disinherited is determined not to let
go without a fight. He knows that Vishnu is not Kalyani's boyfriend
and suspects that he is only acting. He makes various botched
attempts to prove this. Vishnu and Kalyani are not getting along
and keep bickering.
Over time, Kalyani begins to fall in love with Vishnu and hopes to
marry him for real. A couple of days after they have a mysterious
visitor (
M.G. Soman) who claims to be a relative of
Vishnu.
Vishnu finally reveals the truth about his past to Kalyani. Vishnu
is actually an escaped convict from a jail who is sentenced to be
executed, and it turns out the visitor is the
prison warden. Vishnu was a freelance
photographer and he was married to a woman named Revathy (Lizy), a
mute dancer. They also had a child. Vishnu discovers that a man was
visiting his wife when he was not around and begins to suspect her
fidelity. Coming home one day he finds the man there and tried to
attack him. Lizy dies in the scuffle that follows, Vishnu discovers
that the man is her brother who is a terrorist (he is involved with
the
Naxalites). He tells Kalyani that he
escaped to make money for a surgery on his child.
After a happy fortnight, Kalyani's father returns to the US. The
final seen shows the warden taking Vishu to jail where his
execution awaits him. His child is with Kalyani suggesting she will
raise the child.
Cast
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