Bheetu

Starring: Sudipta Chakraborty, Parno Mitra, Ritwik
Directed by Utsab Mukherjee
Rating: **

Two women returning from a nightclub in Calcutta are raped and kil­led. Inspector Dasgupta is on the case but, without concrete clues, makes little headway. The rapists go on with their daily lives. One is a waiter in a seedy restaurant where he falls for the owner's son's girlfriend and stalks her. She herself has a troubled past as a victim of child sexual abuse and suffers from psychological disorders. With the exception of Dasgupta, all men in Bheetu come across as sexual predators, liars, cheats, even cheapskates.

But for all his ‘male bashing’, the director seems set on a tactic of ‘objectification’ of the victims, for the vis­ual content revolves around rape and molestation.

Bheetu (coward in Bengali) aims to be a crime thriller, and the slick, racy script does generate a few genuine suspenseful moments. Including a shower shot inspired by Hitchcock’s Psycho. But it is not a ‘psychological drama’ and fails to offer glimpses into a coward’s or pervert’s mind. Nor does it relate the protagonist’s current plight to her childhood scars. The only redemptive, if predictable, moment in the film is when one of the women is able to rise above abject cowardice into courage.