Monday, July 13, 2009

Unishe April and Aparna


Unishe April (1994) is an award-winning feature film directed by Rituparno Ghosh. This Bengali feature film stars Aparna Sen, Debashree Roy, Prasenjit Chatterjee and Dipankar Dey. The film's music is composed by Jyotishka Dasgupta. It won 2 National Film Awards in 1995, including the Golden Lotus Award for Best Film. It is a loose remake of the 1978 Ingmar Bergman film Autumn Sonata. This film portrays some of the finest gestures of Aparna Sen.

Sarojini (Aparna Sen) is a dancer, whose immense love and dedication of her art raises her to a level of a great dancer honored with lots of acclamations and numerous prizes on one hand while drifts her away from her family on the other hand. Her growing popularity and sen sex resulted in development of an inferior complex by her husband Manish (Boddhiswatta). This complexes seemed to crop up in daily family matters resulting a drift between the couple.The husband shapes their only daughter in his hands and cuddles her from her mother who is too busy after her career. She seems to find a replacement for the void in her life through dancing, however is unsure whether her blossoming career and success is really bringing her happiness.

The sudden dismise of Manish forces Sarojini to put her daughter in hostel .These trivialities , the glittering memory of her father and her mother's inability of give her proper time results in developing complexity inside little Aditi (Debasree Roy) hatred towards her mother.The film however starts when Aditi is grown up and is keen to make a go of her career as a doctor like his father. By that time there has already been a sharp cleavage between mother daughter relationship.What hammers in Aditi's mind is that her mother has forgotten her father to such an extent that she even does not remember her father's death anniversary.Misunderstanding dismatch of temperaments crop up creating an air of suffocation for both.

Aditi by that time has also chosen her life partner and is obsessed with him as she had been always looking for somebody to care for her.She wanted a love that she didn't get from her mother.Situationally she was ditched her boyfriend on that very day and situations forced mother and daughter for a face to face conversation.Gradually they unlock their hearts top each other.The story of twenty years came out for once in a lifebreath.Untold facts gets deciphered , misunderstandings seems to get cleared.All hinting to a big question "Will Aditi be able to forgive her mother ?"

Rituparno depicts their embittered relationship with utmost care.How the daughter shows indifference to her mother's activities to her mother's friends students are woven with extremely natural dialogues and sometimes quoted in "Thanx" .Some scenes like mother celebrating her success on her husband's anniversary , her daughter's not taking part in celebrations , daughter's ignorance of mother's pain in knee do justice in the weaving of the relationship.He has gone into depth in portraying the mental status of Aditi throughout the film.Some details like Aditi forgets to close the tap or switch of the light brings in the naturality of the film.The flashbacks comes quite naturally and matches with the state of the mind.Rituparno has taken care of every single character of the film which bloom forth bold performances by Debosree Roy and Aparna Sen.

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