Director: Paresh Kamdar; Writer: Paresh Kamdar; Cinematographer: K.K. Mahajan; Editor: Paresh Kamdar; Cast: Sunil Barve, Rohini Hattangadi, Rajeshwari Sachdev, Niraj Sah, Virendra Saxena, Ramesh Shah, Renuka Shahane
Summary: Kamdar’s debut film avoids the pitfalls of the
New Indian Cinema’s tendency to rescue
‘commercial’ films by relying on quotations and
an allegedly Brechtian self-reflexiveness (cf.
Saeed Mirza, Ketan Mehta). The film tells the
tale of a middle-class college youth, Tunnu
(Barve), and his unfortunate love life. He first
falls for an equally middle-class girl (Shahane),
but abandons her when the sexy Tina
(Rajeshwari) reassures his narcissism. His
adventures are intercut with those of his conman
father (Saxena), a real-estate tout. In the
end, the father comes to financial grief,
Tunnu’s sister elopes with a Shiv Sena-type
slumdweller and Tunnu’s girlfriend deserts
him, leaving him wondering whether she ever
existed. Tunnu joins the real-estate business,
his optimism undiminished. The film starts with
a brief narration of this tale in the ‘Hindi movie’
idiom, set in a hotel lobby and followed by a
chase, before beginning its own story. Its main
achievement, via numerous double-takes,
resides in the way it reduces the entire business
of storytelling to its stereotypical function,
forcing viewers constantly to doubt the
narrative’s truth value even as it wallows in
several realist conventions.
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