The Girl

Colour, 35mm
India, 2000, 123 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Subrata Sen (b. 1963, Calcutta) graduated in physics from Presidency College, but is a journalist by profession. He got into film working as a political correspondent, though his initial contact came through Satyajit Raj, a director who worked as an editor on the children’s magazine for which Sen started writing as a boy. He is a writer (with a novel and many stories to his credit, a selection of which came out in an English edition in 1998) but works mainly editing an online magazine located in Calcutta. The low-budget film The Girl (Ek je Aache Kanya, 2000) is Sen’s directing debut and was awarded last year’s Srinivas National Award – an Indian prize given to the best domestic directorial debut.

About the director

Anjan works in advertising and has recently rented a room in a house in the suburbs of Calcutta. Eighteen-year-old Ria, who lives there with her grandfather, falls in love with the new tenant. But Anjan already has a long-time girlfriend, Rupa, who works with him in advertising. The rejected girl in vain tries to win Anjan’s favour. When she sees that her efforts are futile she starts to make trouble for the couple. At first her mischief is only minor, but it is followed by more serious threats to Anjan’s advertising project. And when the couple announce their engagement the girl becomes so enraged that she tries to kill them. A year later Ria is released from a mental institution because the doctors believe her to be stable. Anjan and Rupa are married and have moved away. But a new tenant has moved into grandfather’s house. . . . This stylistically refined drama is reminiscent of the films of Pedro Almodóvar. At the same time it candidly reflects the cultural degradation of the metropolitan environment, of traditional interpersonal relationships, and points to the rising crime rate among young people.