The ‘class’ factor, however, remains confined to money power in the girl’s father who runs a seedy bar in Siliguri and muscle power in her uncle who is a political goonda with his troop of henchmen. That does not stop the lovers, Pallavi (Priyanka Sarkar), the pretty schoolgirl and Krishna (Rahul Banerjee) from eloping to Kolkata when the family is fixing Pallavi’s marriage to someone else. Krishna is a bit reluctant about the runaway act but Pallavi, the more aggressive between the two, forces his hand.
Once they reach Kolkata, Krishna seeks out his friend Ali for shelter. And the film changes its course to turn back on the star-crossed lovers towards the end. Ali (Rudraneel Ghosh) lives in a mess where eight men live in terrible conditions in a room that only four can share. The mess residents queue up outside the stinking washroom that hardly has a door to speak of. The residents have their self-appointed idols too. Some of them are freeloaders; some are tall-talkers while one hogs a room all for himself. An ‘assistant director’ promises roles to some in exchange for cigarettes, snacks and tea. Krishna and Pallavi are clandestinely pushed into a now-empty room and they make love in the impossible situation. The rest is somewhat predictable but not completely because the director chooses to keep the film open-ended.
Technical expertise:
The script begins to falter after the diabolic uncle takes the couple away, but till then it is smooth-sailing. Priyanka and Rahul offer the freshness Bengali cinema was dying to get for many years. They are young, absolutely new and have tried to do as much justice to the script as they could though the script backs Priyanka more than Rahul. The original touch is that the film opens with the couple’s elopement after top-angle shots of the city of Kolkata panning across to cover people going about their daily lives including a madman who roams aimlessly across the streets. The love affair in the first half is a bit repetitive and the scenes in the girl’s home are superfluous.
Preetam Choudhury’s production design is mind-blowing and realistic. Jeet’s music ably complemented with Gautam-Susmit’s lyrics blend into the theme and story of the film very well. Premendra Bikash Chaki’s cinematography is brilliant in the second half but not so good in the first. This is a good debut where the footage is too long and the dream scenes stick out like sore thumbs. Raj has also made Priyanka prance around in a towel but it does not look vulgar. A good debut by a young director. One only hopes he can sustain the standard he has established with his first film. The film deserves one star for production design, one star for acting and one for the cinematography.