BGK, If 'Chandramukhi' or 'Sivaji' are hits in Kerala, they are anomalies; exceptions that do not mirror a particular trend. I can cite any number of examples of remakes. Malayalam directors themselves are very apprehensive about the response from Tamil audience, when they themselves get down to remaking their Malayalam hits in Tamil. Aware of the tastes of Tamil audience, they dilute the original so much that the remake ends up looking totally different with least resemblance to the original. Take Fazil's 'Yennannum Kannettan, a Malyalam hit of mid-80s which was remade in Tamil by the director as 'Varusham 16, a Karthik-Kushboo starrer. The role played by Thilagan in Malayalam was played by the late thespian VK Ramasamy. The comedy track was predictably very vulgar. When a comparison was made between the Tamil and Malayalam versions, the director in an interviewsimply said, 'TN market is different; this is what will sell there' That should tell you the general perceptions of Tamils amongst Keralites.
I hold no brief for Adoor Gopalakrishnan kind of filmmaking; but you can certainly look at directors like satyan anthikkad, Sibi Malayil, Hariharan, Shaji Karun, IV Sasi, Padmarajan who work in the commecial format but with very powerful stories and characterization. Here you have people pouncing on me to defend a very medicore director like P Vasu. Compared to Malayalam films, Tamil films are noisy and very lewd. I have seen 'Katha Parayumbol', the Malayalm original b
