Runaway marriages or to be more precise, elopement have been fictionalised in novels such as Dicken’s Pickwick Papers and of course, the real life elopement of Elizabeth Barrett with poet Robert Browning have been found in the pages of a play which was later made into a film entitled The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Basu Chatterji, perhaps, tries to steal a march though, he may not steal the thunder in perpetuating with the same theme with his latest Bengali feature film Chupichupi.

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Chupichupi (secretive) had its world premiere on March 10 once again on Tara Bangla in the aftermath of Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsav and Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Uttara, which is now being released at Nandan for public viewing. Definitely Chupichupi comes across as a more engaging film than Bollywood’s Basu Chatterji’s last brush with Bangla cinema and than which was his maiden venture entitled Hatat Bristi (Suddenly the Rains).

By being attached with Bollywood films for such a considerable period, Chatterji seems to have lost touch with the etnicity of presenting Bengali cinema in its true perspective though Chupichupi contains all the frills of a conventional entertainer. At best, it comes across as a cliched romance of an attempted runaway marriage. As in his previous film Hatat Bristi, he had roped in Nachiketa and Kumar Sanu to provide the theme’s background score with some catchy tunes. But aren’t the audience getting a bit tired of this same time tested popular device time and again?

Is it not high time that directors of the ilk of Basu Chatterji’s repute did some soul searching and present something with more substance? However, on a more positive note Chupichupi offers some slick cinematography enhancing the smooth pacing. Soumitra Chatterjee plays the role of the father belonging to the old school, who wants to get his college going daughter, played by Priyanka Tridevi, married off.
He is unaware of his daughter’s liaison with a middle class youth enacted by Firdaus (from Bangladesh) who both decide to elope and marry knowing that their nupital ties will never get the father’s consent or acceptance.

All’s well that ends well and the director makes sure of bringing about a reforming instinct in the father when he realises, after much ado, that love does not create social barriers. That’s about all, except only the humane dialogues of the father may be the filmmakers crowning glory, to bring about a change of heart.

-Anit Mukerjea