Only if you love Kolkata

Antaheen
Cast: Rahul Bose, Aparna Sen, Sharmila Tagore, Radhika Apte, Kalyan Ray
Director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Rating: **

Writer-director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury uses the simple idea of the endless wait for perfect love as a theme and explores it via four different situations with unequal weight and confused antecedents. The four cases all converge at the same point - express your feelings before the opportunity is suddenly and inexplicably lost.

A motherless cop, Abhik Choudhury (Rahul Bose) finds solace in a late-night internet chat window. Brinda (Radhika Apte), his anonymous chat buddy, is a TV reporter.

They know nothing about each other in the virtual world so when they meet in reality, the penny cannot drop. Brinda is a rising star at her channel. Abhik lives with his unmarried aunt (Sharmila Tagore) while his brother Ranjan is physically, but not emotionally, separated from his wife Paromita (Aparna Sen).

 Even after the first hour, the relationship between the characters remains tenuous. It is hard to believe that internet chat buddies know nothing about each other, not even profession, address, what they did that day.

The director crafts long drawn-out theatrical scenes which may work on stage but are jarring in film. The emotional connect is frayed further by the numerous songs visualised as montages with Radhika Apte as she walks, bathes, dresses, watches the rain, strokes walls, lies on her bed - you get the drift.

Shantanu Moitra’s score is a plus point. The cinematography (Avik Mukhopadhyay) is lush in parts but inconsistent. Recommended for those who are abundantly patient, Kolkata lovers, Rahul Bose fans, or craving to see a Bengali film.