Dosor

Starring: Konkana Sen Sharma, Prasenjit, Pallabi Chatterjee
Directed by Rituparno Ghosh
Rating: ***

Yet another tale of marital infidelity. There may not seem anything remarkably different aboutDosor. But this Bengali film finds Rituparno Ghosh in fine form, managing to do what he knows best: looking intimately at the fragility of relationships, exploring the depths of his characters’ innermost emotions.

Something about Dosor reminded me of Kieslowski’s Three Colours Blue. The car accident, a death, its repercussions, the hidden betrayals that a catastrophe can brutally bring to surface and a journey of reconciliation that the protagonist has to go on. Like Blue, the central character is that of a wife reconciling with grief. But, unlike Blue, the husband is still alive; it’s the seeming end of her relationship with him that she is really mourning. 

After a weekend rendezvous, Kaushik and Mita meet with an accident in which Mita dies and their clandestine relationship comes out in the open. The pivot of the film is a lovely performance from Konkana as the wife who learns of the deceptions and lies even as she faces up to the tragedy. As Kaberi, she charts out the journey of the affronted wife very credibly. The grief, anger, deep humiliation and yet the care and concern for the man. There are some moving moments: when she talks to her mother about living alone in the future, when she erupts in front of her husband’s boss only to politely apologise later, when she sees herSMS on his mobile and calls back on the number only to hear her voice, or when she gives bath to the injured Kaushik, her irritation gradually giving way to compassion. Should she forgive everything just because the other woman is dead? The most interesting element is her attempt to reach out to Subir, the husband of Mita. The initial discomfort, exchanging things of each other’s spouses, the dry comment about how Subir looked better with the moustache. There is a matter-of-fact poignancy in their interaction that later grows into a strange bonding. The black and white images, stillness of frames and minimal music—all adds up to create a nice piece of introspective cinema. But the film falters in the parallel stories of unfaithfulness, in consciously trying to create an intricate web of infidelities.  

High Fives

Bollywood

1. Tom Dick and Harry
2. 36 China Town
3. Gangster
4. Pyare Mohan
5. Tathastu

Hollywood

1. Mission Impossible III
2. Poseidon
3. R.V.
4. Just My Luck
5. An American Haunting

Acid Jazz Tracks

1. When You Gonna Learn
2. Channel 1 Suite 
3. Sly   
4. You’ve Got it Bad, Girl
5. Latin Shuffle 

Courtesy: Film Information