Katrina Kaif is currently enjoying the success of her recently released film Merry Christmas. The film, directed by Sriram Raghavan, also features Vijay Sethupathi and has been winning everyone’s hearts. The audience has been praising their performances and chemistry. In an exclusive chat with News18 Showsha, Katrina opens up about the audience reception.
“I have wanted to do something with Sriram sir for a long time and we have had multiple conversations about it. There is a certain rawness and realness with the genre that he explores through his previous films. But beyond that, there is a human quality that comes across in the characters that he creates which for me was fascinating. As an actor, Merry Christmas is an opportunity that you don’t get every day. I am very happy with the kind of positive response that we are getting for the film,” she says.
An aching mix of nostalgia and romance, intrigue and suspense, Merry Christmas unfolds on the eve of Christmas. (WARNING: Spoilers Ahead) The film puts the spotlight on two unlikely individuals crossing paths leading to many dark revelations. Kaif’s character Maria is troubled and mysterious but there’s so much more. The restraint in her performance adds layers of complex emotions to her character that lend perfectly to the narrative that slowly unfolds to reveal layers of deceit and darkness.
The actor explains that working on the character of Maria was an intense process. “Sriram sir doesn’t spoon feed you. He is going to make you tell him what you feel in the scene and how will the character react to the situations that she is in. He makes you search for honesty. So working on Merry Christmas was extremely rewarding and challenging at the same time. It was such an intense process, but a wonderful one.”
“There was a long scene between my character and Vijay Sethupathi’s character (Albert) and Sririam sir wanted us to rehearse it. After doing it the first time, I asked him when we were going to shoot the sequence and he simply told me when the time was right. We rehearsed that scene every day until he knew that everyone was perfectly in sync and that’s when he shot it. As an actor, there was a lot of discovery, learning some new techniques about the craft,” she adds.
Merry Christmas takes a profoundly romantic turn, as mentioned by Kaif, leading to a thrilling and creative climax. “For me, sacrifice is the ultimate expression of love and that is what we have shown in the end. But I wasn’t expecting the way we shot for it. Initially, the climax had dialogues between all the characters involved. But while shooting, Sriram sir that there won’t be any dialogue and it will all be conveyed through expressions. Initially, it was a moment of disbelief for me (laughs). I thought it was far out to pull off something like it. After rehearsing it I asked Sriram sir if we were convinced and he was dead sure about it. So you go on with that conviction. It has come out so uniquely beautiful, poetic, and a tender moment.”
Based on Frédéric Dard’s French novel Le Monte-charge (Bird in a Cage), Kaif says that she did read the book before working on the film. “I read the book and I was absolutely in love with it and it was a story that I wanted to tell. I have not attempted this genre before but that was secondary. For me, I just wanted to tell the story because I find it hard to put this film in a particular genre. It is a whodunit thriller but in its way, Merry Christmas is a unique quirky love story. It is a character study of two broken people. It shows love in the most unusual situations and unexpected individuals,” she says.
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