Director: Aparna Sen; Writer: Aparna Sen; Cinematographer: Ashok Mehta; Cast: Raakhee, Sandhya Rani Chatterjee, Aparna Sen, Mukul Sharma, Dipankar De, Anil Chatterjee, Bharati Devi, Chitti Ghosal, Manas Mukherjee Jr, Arjun Guha-Thakurta
Summary: Sen followed up her directorial debut, 36
Chowringhee Lane (1981) with this story
about a 40-year-old married woman, Parama
(Raakhee) who falls in love with Rahul
(Sharma), an expatriate photo-journalist
working for glossy magazines who
photographs her making her look glamorous.
Their affair, and the invasion of the glamour
machine into her life, becomes a problem
when some of the photographs, earlier
admired by the family, are published in a
journal. Parama is rejected by her husband and
has a mental breakdown. In the end, a doctor
suggests prescribing psychiatric treatment and
when Parama adamantly refuses any sense of
guilt, her young daughter comes and gives her
mother moral support. The film is notable
mainly for its emancipatory thrust, undermined
by a class-inflected sense of nostalgia for
‘belonging’, rather than for its cinematic
qualities which are akin to the kitschy style of
glossy consumer magazines. The Bengali
version, shown in Calcutta amid much
controversy, was successful; the Hindi version
received a fitful release.
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