Snegithiye

About the film

Snegithiye (transl. Oh female friend!) is a 2000 Indian Tamil-language mystery thriller film directed by Priyadarshan. The film notably features only female characters, played by Tabu, Jyothika, Sharbani Mukherjee and Ishitta Arun. This is the latest Tamil film of Tabu till date. Music was composed by Vidyasagar. The film, released in 2000, proved to be an average grosser at the box office but bagged positive reviews from critics.

Originally planned to be made as a multilingual, in Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi, the film was released first in Tamil, while the Malayalam version, Raakilipattu (transl. Rock music), as well as the Hindi dubbed version of the Malayalam version, Friendship were released seven years later. The film's story is loosely based on the 1999 Marathi film Bindhaast.

Plot

Best friends Vani "Vasu" Subramaniam (Josephine in Malayalam) and Radhika Menon are carefree pranksters at a prestigious ladies' college in Chennai. They stay up late, break rules and wreak havoc at their hostel, much to their lecturers' annoyance. They also form a rivalry against Geetha, the college queen bee. Malathi, Radhika's aunt, wants her niece to complete her studies, so that she can take over her late parents' multi-million business. In order to straighten Radhika out, Malathi arranges for her to get married.

At this point, Vasu and Radhika are introduced to Gayathri, a fiercely independent and strong police officer and an alumnus of their college. During an event at the college, Gayathri explains how women in the country lose their independence and livelihood after getting married. Convinced that they should avoid marriage as long as possible, Vani and Radhika pretend that Radhika has a boyfriend from overseas, named Ramesh, in order to avoid Malathi from arranging anymore suitors. However, this fantasy takes a whole new turn when an actual person named Ramesh calls and sends Radhika letters, claiming to be her boyfriend. To end this nuisance, Vasu and Radhika invite Ramesh to their hostel during the college dance program and plan to trick him into blurt out the truth. Vasu instructs Radhika to bring her aunt's guns for their safety.

However, a mysterious shooter kills Ramesh before the girls can confront him. Fearing that suspicion would fall on them, they decide to dispose of the body by hiding it in the air ventilator. Unexpectedly, the body slides down the vent and lands on the auditorium stage, in the middle of a performance. Gayathri, who is the guest of honour at the event, takes charge of the case. She finds Radhika's necklace on the body and the two girls are brought in for questioning. At the police station, an old woman shows up claiming that Ramesh is her son and has gone missing. Realising that the noose is tightening and that the story of their innocence will not stand, Vasu and Radhika escape police custody and hide in an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of the city.

Production

The original story idea for the film was taken from Marathi writer Chandrakant Kulkarni, who had made the successful Marathi film, Bindhaast, based on the story last year. Priyadarshan heard about the film and asked producer Mukesh Mehta to see it and decide whether he would like to produce the movie and thus Mehta went to Bombay, saw the film and liked it. However the producer reiterated that they have taken only the main thread from the Marathi story with the rest of the film, its sub-plots and the treatment are completely different from the original. Initially, it was planned as a Malayalam film with a cast familiar to the Kerala audience. But as Priyadarshan's excitement over the project grew, the canvas got wider and the producer decided to look for a bigger audience. Thus Jyothika, Sharbani Mukherjee and Ishita Arun, daughter of Ila Arun, stepped in to give it a more national flavour. Seasoned actresses like Sukumari, Manorama, Lakshmi, KPAC Lalitha, Mita Vasisht, Tabu, and Dipti Bhatnagar also joined the all-female team. Cinematographer Jeeva and art director Sabu Cyril also joined the team and they shot 90 per cent of the film in a college in Mysore and the rest in Chennai, also featuring live coverage of the Dasara (Dussera) festival of Mysuru. The film was subsequently made simultaneously in Tamil and Malayalam with a title of Raakilipattu, while a Hindi version was a…

Jyothika prioritised her work in the project and thus delayed her schedules for the filmsUyirile Kalanthathu in order to ensure the film was released as early as possible. The songs of the film were released at Devi Theatre with Kamal Haasan appearing as the chief guest.

Soundtrack

While S. P. Venkatesh composed the score, the songs were composed by Vidyasagar, except "Kannukulle" which was composed by Raghunath Seth as mentioned in the original audio cassette. The songs were well received by the audience and critics. In an audio review, Venky of Chennai Online wote "On the whole, it is a very good effort by Vidyasagar".

Release

Release for the film was postponed several times with the makers hoping to get a simultaneous release for all versions. The team also noted the Kidnapping of Dr. Rajkumar by bandit Veerappan as reason for the delay. Snegithiye went on to inspire other film makers to produce all women ventures, with director Gnanasekharan announcing that his project, Aishwarya, starring Uma, Monal and Abhinayashree would be a "small-scale Snegithiye".

Key details