Pavithra

Story: A teenaged Pavithra (Shriya) takes to flesh trade in a desperate bid to make money needed to treat her cancer stricken mother. She grows up to become a high society call girl who gets married to an evil MLA’s son and becomes a politician herself.

Movie Review: There seems to be some collective mental block Tollywood’s writers suffer from when creating prostitute characters for established leading ladies. Invariably they happen to take to sex-work as an act of sacrifice - to save their ailing parents, support their family or other such melodramatic reasons.

Guess we just love our clichés and this is another of those “women empowering prostitute films” Tollywood keeps churning out from time to time. At least the hooker goes on to win an election and becomes an MLA in this movie, which professes that we need a Women’s Protection Ministry to safeguard the rights of the fairer sex. Well, that’s the message this movie comes with.

So we have this spunky call girl who counts the city’s elite among her clientele and runs a charitable trust with her fees of Rs. One lakh a night. She gets hitched to the son (Kaushik) of a scheming politician, Sudarshan (Saikumar) who seeks to milk it to his political gain. The plan is to murder Pavithra and win the election on the sympathy vote. But Sudarshan himself dies of a heart attack.

Pavithra learns of her father-in-law's devious scheme and contests the election to teach the villains a lesson.

Shriya does a decent job of playing Pavithra who likes to call herself “apavithra” (impure). But it’s just a very tacky character in a no brainer of a script. Funnily enough the most cinematic part of the movie is a sensual number Sukumara Ra Ra… in which the camera indulges in sari clad Shreya’s curves. Sai Kumar puts in a measured performance as the wicked politician.

The writing is decent in parts as is the music but it’s all too patchy and standard of filmmaking on display is amateurish at best. To say it’s disappointing would be putting it kindly.

Note: Besides Shriya Saran’s curves there is nothing in this movie that’s worth watching per se.