At a time when a New York jury found movie mogul Harvey Weinstein guilty of sex crimes and convicted him of rape, the MeToo movement has yet again gripped Indian cinema. Recently, Tamil actress Rekha made a shocking revelation about the unplanned kiss by actor Kamal Haasan in filmmaker K. Balachander's 1986 film Punnagai Mannan. Here's a complete timeline of event:
How it all started
Right in the middle of Harvey's conviction, a video clip surfaced online and was going viral. It was nothing but an interview of South Indian actress Rekha revealing that the kiss she shared with Kamal in Punnagai Mannan was without her consent. The scene that she was referring to had Rekha and Kamal play two star-crossed lovers, who jump off a waterfall because their relationship was not being accepted. What made it worse was that Rekha Rekha was only 16 when she did the film after completing Class 10.
Her full statement
"I've said this a hundred times. They shot the scene without me knowing about it. People ask me the same question and I'm fed up of answering it," Rekha told a portal, insisting Kamal Haasan and the late Tamil cinema doyen Balachander tricked her into doing the scene. She added that kiss helped the film in totality to bring out certain needed emotions. "The kiss didn't look ugly or aggressive on screen. There was a need for it, but I was a very young girl and I didn't know about it. He (director K Balachander) said, 'Kamal, close your eyes! You remember what I told you, right?' and Kamal said that he did. Then we had to jump when he said 1, 2, 3... we kissed and then jumped. It was only when I watched it in theatres that I realised it had such a huge impact," she said. She claimed, "They continued after that shot also, we had a location shift. Suresh Krissna and Vasanth were the associate directors, and I told them I wasn't informed about the kiss and that I wouldn't have agreed to it. But they told me to think of it as a big king kissing a small child. They told me it wouldn't be passed by the Censor. I asked them what the Censor was!"
The aftermath of her shocking revelation
Neither Balachander nor Kamal Haasan apologised to her after the scene. "Why would they apologise? The film was a superhit! I got many films after that, too, with Ramarajan and Ilaiyaraaja, like 'Namma Ooru Pattukaran'. We were all so busy in those days, going from one schedule to another," Rekha recalled. Although she never demanded an apology from either Kamal or the late Balachander for the incident but, as the news spread, sections of social media said the actor should say sorry. Many netizens have said that the veteran superstar Kamal Haasan should apologise to the actress for the kiss. The issue has now raised a storm on social media and we wonder what Kamal has to say on this.
(Source: The News Minute/IANS)
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