Director: Rituparno Ghosh; Writer: Rituparno Ghosh; Producer: Renu Roy; Cinematographer: Sunirmal Majumdar; Editor: Ujjal Nandi; Cast: Aparna Sen, Debashree Roy, Dipankar Dey, Prasenjit
Duration: 01:05:58; Aspect Ratio: 1.222:1; Hue: 20.345; Saturation: 0.092; Lightness: 0.347; Volume: 0.118; Cuts per Minute: 7.336
Summary: Ghosh’s second feature, a major success, is an
Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978) type
melodrama focussing on the differences
between a famous mother, the dancer Sarojini
(Sen), and her daughter Aditi (Roy), a medical
student in Delhi. The daughter, as was her
doctor father before her, is unable to handle
her mother’s sense of independence and fame.
Most of the film takes place in a single night in
Calcutta as the daughter tries to commit suicide
on the anniversary of her father’s death. A
barrage of dialogue - devoted to showing two
major Bengali female stars, Sen and Roy,
locked in a histrionic duel - ends only when
the two become reconciled, not through any
resolution of the major issues involved in their
problems, but by reconfirming the filial bond.
The film marked a departure from the
dominant melodramas of the time which were
geared to addressing, in the industry’s terms,
‘female and rural’ audiences rather than the
urban middle class habituated to ‘modernising’
television drama.
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