‘Operation Valentine is bringing a whole new perspective to a film about air force officers’

SHIKHA DUGGAL
Manushi Chillar is all set to woo the audience with her bilingual Telugu-Hindi action film, Operation Valentine, starring opposite Varun Tej. Ahead of the film’s release on March 1, The Pioneer has the lead actress onboard, and she begins, “My debut experience was a totally different memory to me altogether; it’s incomparable,” she recalls with vividness, adding, “It was my first time on a movie set! My earliest shot is actually deeply ingrained in my memory. This is my fourth movie, Operation Valentine; this time, I was much more confident and knew what to expect on the sets.”
Just recently, we had another aerial action film, Fighter. And now, we have Operation Valentine. So did Manushi get to watch Fighter in the first place? She says, “I have been quite busy with promotions for my upcoming release, so I haven’t had time to watch Fighter. But all of these movies, whether be it a Gunjan Saxena or a Fighter, including mine, have one thing in common: the air force connection. Every movie has a distinct subject matter and a soul! My screenplay focuses more on the basis of emotions. However, these films’ box office successes simply serve to confirm that, sure, people do enjoy aerial action scenes as well,” says the leading lady, since there are parallels between the movies Fighter and Operation Valentine.
Because they are so invested in the movie, she says she can even see viewers grasping some of the jargon used in these kinds of productions. “Since we didn’t want to get too technical, we also didn’t want the audience to think that the movie was about what was actually happening in the sky. When I read the screenplay, the air force lingo didn’t seem very common to me! In the movie, I’m portraying a radar controller—a character that hasn’t been taken up by any of the starring ladies yet. Thus, when I first started reading the narration, I was also perplexed as to what this discussion meant and other things. I was told, ‘Well, this is an aircraft, that’s how the speed is controlled,’ but I had never heard of any of this before. For me, the filmmaker really needed to simplify things; the layman was no different to it. However, I can state with certainty that we are bringing a whole new perspective to a film about air force officers that has never been seen before. Although there are action scenes in the movie, you can believe that emotions play a major role throughout,” highlights the up-and-coming actress from the South.
An intriguing admission from the lead actress of the much-awaited blockbuster smash, “I am a DRDO kid. I have firsthand experience with this since my father has been employed for the Ministry of Defense for nearly thirty years. My dad practices medicine! I have witnessed how they live because my uncle is also in the army. I have personally lived with Fauji children. I would admit, though, that my view of everything has been cursory. I was so immediately drawn in by the script’s emotions, regardless of the fact that it was a drama centered around war when it was presented to me.”