Thana Theke Aschi

Starring: Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Paoli Dam, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Rudranil Ghosh, Alaknanda Ray, Dulal Lahiri.
Music: Jeet Ganguli
Director: Saron Dutta
Censor Certificate: A

I'd been looking forward to watching Saron Dutta's adaptation of Thana Theke Aschi. Hiren Nag's 1965 film with Uttam Kumar in the lead role is one of my favourite films, and Dutta has had an interesting career so far, starting with the different but not very well made horror Raat Barota Paanch, followed by the underrated thriller Shikaar. So I was intrigued to see how Dutta handles this subject.

The film starts with a lavish party in the home of Amarnath Mullick (Dulal Lahiri), celebrating the engagement of his daughter Rinita (Srabanti Banerjee) to Rajat Dutta (Rudranil Ghosh), the son of a business tycoon. At the same time, in a non-descript basti, a girl commits suicide.

After the party, an unexpected visitor arrives at the Mullick household - Inspector Tinkari Haldar (Sabyasachi Chakraborty), holding a diary of Sandhya Mondal (Paoli Dam), the basti girl who has just committed suicide. Haldar alleges that all the family members, including film-maker son Arin (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) and the NGO-running mother Sutapa (Aloknanda Ray) are responsible for the death of Sandhya. One by one, each family member's interaction with Sandhya is unravelled.

The film manages to grab your attention from the first scene - the way the scenes of the party are mixed with the scenes of Sandhya contemplating, and ultimately killing herself are extremely well done - in particular the shot after she slits her wrist, where a glass of red wine is spilt at the party. The film moves briskly along without any diversions from the main story, with some of the revelations being more shocking than others. Unfortunately there are a few loose ends - Sandhya's body is discovered by a girl calling her Didi, but these people are nowhere to be seen for the rest of the film. Sandhya changes her name before her interaction with the different family members, but the reason for this isn't explained. But these are small complaints for a film that is a refreshing change from the loud 'blockbusters' the Bengali film industry normally churns out.

Performance wise, Paoli takes top acting honours. With no dialogue throughout the film, she expresses a lot through her eyes and expressions, and she is fantastic in the film. It's a pity that it's taken up to now to recognise her talent, and hopefully she'll be doing more lead roles now as opposed to the side roles she's had to do in the past (she had the thankless role of Payal's friend in I Love You). Parambrata does reasonably well, but doesn't portray the guilt of choosing films over his love too well. Rudranil is repulsive in his role - which is testimony to how good an actor he is. Again, someone who deserves more. Sabyasachi is dependable as always, infusing his dialogues with the right amount of acidity. The rest of the cast fit their roles well.

Word of warning - this film is consistently dark in tone, and can make uncomfortable viewing in parts. The rape scene is fairly explicit and disturbing. However, this film does have an 'A' certificate, and is by no means family viewing.

All in all, well worth a watch if you want something different. If your favourite hero is Jeet, and your favourite dialogue is 'Maarbo ekhane, laash porbe shoshane', stay well away.