# Love & Love Only

Love & Love Only is a 2015 Australian film directed, co-produced, written and edited by Indian-born Australian filmmaker Julian Karikalan starring Rohit Kalia and Georgia Nicholas in the lead roles.
A cross-cultural romantic film where an Indian falls in love with an Australian girl features background score and songs by India's legendary composer Ilaiyaraaja. This is the first-ever English-language feature film for which he has composed original songs.
The film was launched for online audience on 22 November 2016 and is available on YouTube in countries that allow paid content, while for the rest of the world, the movie is available on Vimeo on demand and VHX.

## Summary

Krishna "Kris" is forcefully sent to Australia by his parents from India to learn business and life, but he struggles to adapt to Australian ways as he was always pampered by his mom. In Australia, he falls in love with Stacey, his co-worker, a school dropout from a broken family. Krishna's struggle with cultural differences create problems in their relationship.

## Cast

* Rohit Kalia as Kris
* Georgia Nicholas as Stacey
* Sekhar Mehta as Arvind
* Ambika Asthana as Kannika
* Murthy Vaitheeswaran as Raghu
* Robert Osborne as George
* Ben Cork as Lecturer James
* Shashidhar Dandekar as Rajan
* Suparna Malik as Chitra
* Anton Manojkumar as Joe
* Laurence Nath as Kumar
* Anamika Dhawan as Deepa

## Production

   "Love is a universal feeling, [...] Though the perception of Love differs across cultures, the deeper emotions and the need for love are universal throughout the human race. This film deals with those deeper needs and the effects of true love, from a cross-cultural perspective. If you love romance and beautiful music, this film will entrance you; its magic is universal.

### Development and casting

The film's title is based off of the book Love and Love Only, which features in Kadhalukku Mariyadhai (1997), a film that also featured music by Ilaiyaraaja. The film is about the love between a Punjabi man and an Australian woman. The origin for the film came when the director Julian Karikalan was teased by a Turkish girl while working in IKEA, who said that she loved him as a joke. For this film, Karikalan considered the perspective of what if she was serious about her proposal and modified her character to be Australian. Karikalan also co-produced the film along with his wife. Rohit Kalia, who was Mr. India Australia in 2014, was selected to play the lead alongside Georgia Nicholas, who was chosen from a list of extras. The rest of the cast is from theatre and made their film debut. Karikalan's children also feature in the film in cameo roles.

### Music

Contrary to regular industry practice, the composer of the film came aboard only after the whole film was edited and ready for a preliminary viewing. Once the film was complete, Julian Karikalan, who was a fan of Ilaiyaraaja, made a trip to India to meet him. Ilaiyaraaja consented to support the project.
Being an English film, the composer Ilaiyaraaja was keen in getting native western voices. After advertising online in Australia, Rachael Leahcar, the South Australian singer was chosen to render her voice for the first ever song composed by Ilaiyaraaja for an English film. The background tracks were recorded in Prasad Studios, Chennai and the voice was recorded and mixed in Australia. Ilaiyaraaja was initially set to composed only three songs while Brent Heber, who worked as the sound designer, was to compose the background music. Ilaiyaraaja eventually composed 21 tracks for the film.

### Filming

The film was shot in the Sydney metropolitan area and was additionally shot at the University of Wollongong. While filming at the Sydney Murugan Temple, the scenes were shot from outside as filming was prohibited inside.

## Music

The music was composed by Ilaiyaraaja. The lyrics are written by Julian Karikalan and Denny Burgess. Ramya NSK also features as a playback singer for the album.

## Accolades

| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
| International Film and Entertainment Festival of Australia | December 2014 | Best Musical Score | Ilaiyaraaja | Won |
| International Film and Entertainment Festival of Australia | December 2014 | Best Direction | Julian Karikalan | Won |
| San Francisco Global Movie Festival | August 2015 | — | Love & Love Only | Selected |

## Reception

Australian film producer Tait Brady wrote, "The script is very solid in terms of basic structure. The cross-cultural observations are astute and often amusing and the whole script has the ring of truth, no doubt due to the writer's first-hand experience. It wouldn't be the first Indian-Australian story filmed by any means, but as a film it would still be very different from the Indian/Bollywood productions".
Amreen Godhrawala of aka The Versatile wrote, "The locations are beautiful and simple, the music and background score are spot on and the story unravels the true struggles of an Indian who studies abroad unlike the easy life which our movies usually depict".
Richard Walter, chairman of the University of California, Los Angeles graduate program in screenwriting, wrote, "My view is that there are only two kinds of movies: not cross-cultural romances and others but good movies and bad movies. Yours is clearly in the former category, and I say: Congratulations".